NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 1 of 309
NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015
Today’s content
Ben Rachinger Lisa Owen (TV3): Slater accused of offering blog hack payment Laura Walters: Cameron Slater denies hacking allegations Tim Watkin (Pundit): Dirty Politics 2.0 Patrice Dougan (Herald): Right-wing blogger accused of paying off hacker Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Slater’s bizarre response to the allegations of hacking Pete George (Your NZ): Rachinger promises more Pete Geroge (Your NZ): Rachinger’s “I am Rawshark” tweet Pete George (Your NZ): The Standard’s ‘not Labour’ problem Frank Macskasy (Daily Blog): The Curious Case of Cameron Slater, the Hacker, and the unforgivable crime of stupidity Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Compare how long Slater’s complaint gets investigated to investigations against him Pete George (Your NZ): Rachinger tweets Slater statement on his claims Pete George (Your NZ): Slater talks to Fairfax, contradicts Pete George (Your NZ): Links on Ben Rachinger accusations Pete George (Your NZ): The Nation on Rachinger and Slater versus The Standard Pete George (Your NZ): Rachinger on The Nation? Matthew Dentith: Episode 49 – The @B3nRaching3r Allegations Pete George (Your NZ): Standard goes dirty on dirty politics? Pete George (Your NZ): Slater’s statement on Rachinger looks dirty Pete George (Your NZ): Serious accusations against Rachinger Greg Presland (The Standard): Cameron Slater’s statement on Ben Rachinger TV3: Andrew Little: 'Toxic' Cameron Slater not wanted in NZ politicsMartyn Bradbury: Could this really be the end of Cameron Slater? Matthew Dentith: The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Four Matthew Dentith: The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part One Matthew Dentith: The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Two Matthew Dentith: The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Three Pete George: Rachinger tweeting again Pete George: Talking of explaining… Pete George: Lauda Finem versus The Standard Lauda Finem: The Rachinger Identity – Espionage thriller or just another bad outbreak of Streisand effect? Redbaiter: Rachinger’s rat’s nest- dirty politics meme gets new lease of life Pete George: Rachinger continues on Twitter Carrie Stoddart-Smith: The follow-up: The Rachinger posts The Standard: Rachinger on dirty politics 3 – Scoop takes up the story Alastair Thompson (Scoop): “I Am Rawshark” – Ben Rachinger’s sequel to Dirty Politics The Standard: Rachinger on dirty politics
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The Standard: Rachinger on dirty politics 2 Pete George (Your NZ): Prentice admits “fighting dirty politics” Carrie Stoddart-Smith: The Rachinger posts Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part One) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Two) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Three) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Four) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Five) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Six) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Seven) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Eight) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Nine) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Ten) Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Eleven) Redbaiter: Cameron Slater, Ben Rachinger, and hacking Pete George: Ben Rachinger versus Cameron Slater Pete George: Rachinger versus Slater continued Pete George: Rachinger story gets weirder but no more told Lauda Finem: The Rachinger Conspiracy – He was the perfect weapon until he became the target
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Lisa Owen (TV3): Slater accused of offering blog hack payment Saturday 6 Jun 2015 12:20 p.m.
Police are investigating allegations that controversial WhaleOil blogger Cameron Slater paid a hacker thousands of dollars to break into a rival blog.
It is online where IT consultant Ben Rachinger says he struck up a rapport and started digging dirt with Mr Slater, and where he alleges Mr Slater offered him $5000 to commit a cybercrime.
"He asked me, 'I want you to focus on this job of getting into The Standard. What's a good number for you? I've got $5000 available for it'," he says.
"Then we talked about what a work plan would be. He would not name the funder that was paying for the hack."
FULL STORY: More Dirty Politics? Mr Slater was eager to find out which left-wingers wrote the anonymous blogs on the politics site.
"His plan was to use the information to hit back at the Labour Party, and specifically Andrew Little, on the first day of Parliament in order to dampen the effects of the Dirty Politics book the year before," says Mr Rachinger.
Using encrypted texts, Mr Slater messaged Mr Rachinger in January.
"I want proof on admin of The Standard... I will destroy them," he says.
Police have confirmed to 3 News that detectives are investigating an allegation that Mr Slater offered money in a bid to procure the hacking of a computer system. They say the investigation is a complex one and they are still gathering all the necessary information and a decision on charges is some way off.
3 News has obtained transcripts of hundreds of messages between Mr Rachinger and Mr Slater.
"I think I can get you some scratch in a lump sum to concentrate on this… what's a good number that works for you," Mr Slater says in one text.
"There is $5000 available," he says in another.
Mr Rachinger replies: "Let's get it done."
There is more discussion before this text from Mr Slater: "Prep me a work plan and deliverables… I'll go to the funder."
Later that day Mr Rachinger sends Mr Slater the "work plan".
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Headed up as "Assignment", it talks about clarifying contributors to "x website" in an "untraceable but usable way".
It notes to get hard information on targets requires "entry and exit to the network infrastructure" – meaning a hack, in plain English.
Mr Rachinger says he did not do the hack, which is something the owner of The Standard has confirmed.
Certified bank statements show Mr Slater's company, Social Media Co, paid Mr Rachinger $750 – a down payment Mr Rachinger claims for the hack.
In total, Mr Slater paid the IT consultant more than $9000 in a three-month period.
However a week later, cracks were showing, and Mr Rachinger texts: "It's no small thing that I'm doing an illegal activity for an unnamed client… and handing it off to you."
"It's no small thing I am doing this, I could be being set up in a sting from a media person or cops," Mr Slater replies.
3 News approached Mr Slater for comment, but he declined to give an interview or provide a statement.
However he did deny Mr Rachinger's claims that he commissioned the hack, calling him a liar and insisting he does not break the law. http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/slater-accused-of-offering-blog-hack- payment-2015060612#axzz3cMdqiWLX
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Patrice Dougan (Herald): Right-wing blogger accused of paying off hacker 2:00 PM Saturday Jun 6, 2015
Right-wing blogger Cameron Slater has been accused of paying a man to hack into an opposition website for political gain.
In a statement provided to NZME. News Service, police confirmed they were investigating the claims, saying they had "received a complaint regarding an alleged attempt to procure the hacking of a computer system".
"The complaint is being investigated by Counties Manukau CIB," the statement said.
"There are a number of complexities to the investigation, including the posting online of documentation which has already compromised the investigation and is making our inquires more difficult.
"Police are taking a cautious approach, and working through a number of complex steps to gather the necessary information to advance the enquiry.
"Any decision on charges is some way off at this stage, and will be made after a thorough assessment of all relevant information."
The controversial and outspoken political commentator denies the claims, but police have reportedly confirmed they are investigating the allegations made by Ben Rachinger.
The IT consultant posted his claims on the internet earlier this year, and this morning The Nation broadcast an interview with him, detailing his claims Slater commissioned him to hack into left-wing political blog The Standard to try to uncover the identities of the authors of blogs written anonymously or under pseudonyms.
"Cameron Slater asked me, for financial benefit, to hack into The Standard website and to pull out any and all information about authors of anonymous blog posts on The Standard and also to find out email addresses and IP addresses for further hacking," Mr Rachinger told TV's The Nation.
Slater has long claimed blogs on The Standard are ghost written by Labour insiders, including staff members.
In an encrypted text sent to Mr Rachinger in January, Slater allegedly said: "I want proof of admin at The Standard ... I will destroy them."
He later allegedly said: "I want them all outed, all the MPs, [The Standard founder Lynn] Prentice, [Labour Party chief of staff Matt] McCarten ... all of them."
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Mr Rachinger says Slater asked him to "focus on this job of getting into The Standard", and said he had $5000 available to pay him to do so. But Slater would not name his backer, who was funding the hacking request.
Mr Rachinger says he became Slater's confidant after the IT consultant got in touch with the blogger after a cyber attack on his WhaleOil site. Hacked emails stolen during the security breach were later used to form the information for journalist Nicky Hager's Dirty Politics book, which was released before last year's election.
Mr Rachinger said he offered to strengthen the security on Slater's website, and they continued to stay in touch.
Slater wanted to get back at those who had criticised him in the fall-out from Dirty Politics, Mr Rachinger said. Initially he wanted Mr Rachinger to out 'Rawshark', the hacker who claimed responsibility for the attack on WhaleOil. But then focussed on targeting The Standard.
"His plan was to use this information to hit back at the Labour Party, and specifically [Labour leader] Andrew Little, on the first day of Parliament, in order to dampen the affects of Dirty Politics the year before," Mr Rachinger said.
Bank records showed Mr Rachinger received numerous payments from Slater's company Social Media Co, totalling $9100 over a period of three months.
In the emails and text messages seen by The Nation, Mr Rachinger claimed to be "in" The Standard's system and getting the information, but Mr Rachinger told the programme that he never actually hacked the website, and was simply bluffing Slater.
"I did not have that information at that stage, that information was a bluff. Any information I provided to him was publicly accessible from Google or just looking through websites on the surface," he said.
Mr Rachinger said he was attempting to carry out "an ad hoc investigation of my own". "I believed I would be able to get the evidence that I thought I required to shine sunlight on Mr Slater and his funder's activities."
Their relationship turned sour when Slater realised he'd paid Mr Rachinger and received little in return, the show claimed.
In text messages Slater allegedly sent to Mr Rachinger, he said he has "nothing after $4k", claiming Mr Rachinger has defrauded him, and claiming he was "angry as f***". In one message he allegedly said: "It's no small thing I'm doing this, I could be being set up in a sting by a media person or cops."
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The Nation said police had confirmed that detectives at the Counties Manukau CIB were investigating an allegation that Slater offered money in a bid to procure the hacking of a computer system.
Police said it was a complex investigation and they're still gathering all the necessary information, the programme said. Any decision on charges would be some way off.
Slater declined to be interviewed or provide a statement to The Nation, but "unequivocally denied" the claims, the show said.
He told the programme Mr Rachinger approached him with the information, offering it up for a price.
In an audio clip from a phonecall to Slater, he said he was "sick to death of people trying to set me up".
"I don't break the law, that's the end of the story." http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11460 942
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Laura Walters: Cameron Slater denies hacking allegations Last updated 13:43, June 6 2015
Controversial blogger Cameron Slater is denying allegations that he offered to pay for a hack into left-wing blog The Standard.
IT consultant Ben Rachinger told TV 3's The Nation Slater offered him $5000 to get the website's internal mailing list.
Rachinger said he declined the right-wing blogger's offer.
Rachinger told The Nation the offer was made by text where Slater said he wanted "all MPs outed".
"He asked me, 'I want you to focus on this job of getting into The Standard, I've got $5000 available for it'," he said.
However, Slater has denied these claims, saying "it's total and utter bulls***".
Slater said he was not surprised by the allegations but they were not true.
In the past Rachinger had asked Slater for money when he was in a tough spot, he said.
Slater said he did not recall the exact amount he gave to Rachinger.
"It would be $500 here and $500 there.
"I'm a generous person, I help people out when they're in trouble but sometimes people bite the hand that helps them out."
However, the loans given to Rachinger had been taken out of context, he said.
The allegations followed Slater's claims that articles on The Standard website were ghost-written by Labour Party insiders.
However, The Standard expressly denied this on its website, saying its bloggers came from a variety of backgrounds and had many different political affiliations.
Rachinger said the pair discussed the plan but Slater would not name who was funding the hack.
He said he was only told the "funders aren't the Nats".
A police spokesman said police received a complaint regarding an alleged attempt to procure the hacking of a computer system and it was being investigated by Counties Manukau CIB.
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"There are a number of complexities to the investigation, including the posting online of documentation which has already compromised the investigation, which is making our inquires more difficult."
Police were taking a "cautious approach" and any decision on charges was "some way off", he said.
Slater said he was not aware of any police investigation and he had not been contacted by police in relation to these allegations.
"I've got nothing to hide from any police investigation."
"I've been totally open with the police…I've given them my computer, I've given them my phone, I've given them everything voluntarily."
Rachinger declined to comment beyond what was reported on The Nation. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/69160673/cameron-slater-denies- hacking-allegations
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Tim Watkin (Pundit): Dirty Politics 2.0 JUNE 06, 2015
In which a former confidant of Cameron Slater's claims he was paid to commit a hack of The Standard blogsite; police are investigating
I can't really wax lyrical about the investigation I produced for The Nation into allegations by a 27 year-old IT consultant called Ben Rachinger, that he was paid by blogger Cameron Slater to hack into The Standard.
Rachinger says he strung Slater along for some time before ultimately not doing the hack.
Lisa Owen and I saw bank statements, thousands of texts and other documents and spoke to Rachinger at length on numerous occasions to investigate claims that first appeared online - in posts by Rachinger himself - back in April.
The legal care taken around a story like this is significant, so I can't offer much more in the way of back story. Rachinger is not without fault, but we found him credible in this story and the proof he offered compelling.
Slater however denies the claims, says Rachinger is lying and that we have fallen for it. He says he does not break the law.
So here's our report that ran on TV3. I invite you to take 10 minutes to watch. http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/dirty-politics-20
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Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Slater’s bizarre response to the allegations of hacking June 7, 2015
Cameron Slater has finally commented on the allegations swirling around him that he paid an IT specialist to try and hack into a blog. The response is fascinating…
How absolutely fascinating. Sooooo many questions.
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So, while Slater was publicly pleading poverty and asking his readers to donate money on Whaleoil, he was ‘donating’ $9100 to Ben Rachinger, but the text messages between the two of them where Slater appears to be procuring a cyber crime aren’t real and Cam is actually quite worried for dear Ben??? That’s Cam’s response? That he’s trying to sound as caring as possible is more suspicious than him not posting this on Whaleoil. Cameron has clearly proved he lacks basic empathy in Dirty Politics, for him to suddenly become the patron saint of IT specialists seems, what’s the word I’m looking for folks, optimistic. If it’s all lies, when will Cameron be suing Ben for slander? Here are some questions. 1: Did Cam pay Ben $9100? 2: If he did, why? 3: Are the messages from Slater? 4: Who were the funders? If Cam paid him, then why did he pay him and if it is really Cam speaking, then surely what’s been released proves that he was trying to procure a cyber crime? If that’s the case we need to know who the secret funders were. The Police really need to get off their hands here and investigate this. - See more at: http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/06/07/slaters-bizarre-response- to-the-allegations-of-hacking/#sthash.hb7VT9pB.dpuf http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/06/07/slaters-bizarre-response-to-the- allegations-of-hacking/
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Pete George (Your NZ): Rachinger promises more
Ben Rachinger is active on Twitter this morning, promising more information and saying he will address points in Cameron Slater’s statement yesterday (see Rachinger tweets Slater statement on his claims).
Ben Rachinger @ B3nRaching3r
I’ll release a statement today covering the things that were missed out yesterday and explaining the salient points of Mr Slaters release.
One thing must be clear first. This is not personal with Mr Slater. He is his fathers son just as I am the product of no father at all.
What’s important is getting to the bottom of how the Police triage complaints, the hacking scene in NZ (Pol/Otherwise) and “the funder”.
Unfortunately I have to deal with one salient issue first. It involves claims made about my ethics by a select group of people on here.
Press release on all these matters out soon.
Slater’s alleged funder is an important part of this story.
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Rachinger has published communications that show Slater mentioning ‘a funder’ regarding the money Slater was transferring to Rachinger’s bank account.
Slater was reported in Stuff yesterday in Cameron Slater denies hacking allegations.
Rachinger told The Nation the offer was made by text where Slater said he wanted “all MPs outed”.
“He asked me, ‘I want you to focus on this job of getting into The Standard, I’ve got $5000 available for it’,” he said.
However, Slater has denied these claims, saying “it’s total and utter bulls***”.
Slater said he was not surprised by the allegations but they were not true.
In the past Rachinger had asked Slater for money when he was in a tough spot, he said.
Slater said he did not recall the exact amount he gave to Rachinger.
“It would be $500 here and $500 there.
“I’m a generous person, I help people out when they’re in trouble but sometimes people bite the hand that helps them out.”
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It seems very odd that Slater would transfer thousands of dollars to Rachinger (bank statements show much of it was in $500 lots) for any reason.
It seems especially odd as at the same time on Whale Oil Slater was claiming to be broke and was fundraising to try and pay legal bills and feed his family.
Would WO donors be happy if their donations were dished out because Slater is ” a generous person”. Would Slater’s family be happy?
If there is ‘a funder’ would they be happy if Slater was dishing out generous loans?
This is a part of the story that would benefit from clarification and facts. Currently the money claims don’t add up. http://yournz.org/2015/06/07/rachinger-promises-more/
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Pete Geroge (Your NZ): Rachinger’s “I am Rawshark” tweet
It seems unlikely Ben Rachinger was Rawshark’. His “I am Rawshark” tweet was not the first (of many) claim of solidarity with the Slater hacker.
In October Ben Rachinger tweeted
Ben Rachinger @B3nRaching3r
I am Rawshark.
See “I Am Rawshark” – Ben Rachinger’s Sequel To “Dirty Politics” at Scoop.
He also tweeted:
Ben Rachinger @B3nRaching3r
It’s not proof you want. Snowden gave you proof. Rawshark gave you proof. Manning gave you proof. And 99% of you sat back and did nothing. In February he tweeted: B3n RⒶching3r @B3nRaching3r Feb 15 @TheWarRoomNZ@AbusedNZ@FoxMarama Oh I know this one well. I’m estranged from my parents since police came to the door looking for Rawshark. In October. In a blog post in May The Hacker and all the PMs men Rachinger referred to Rawshark a number of times.
Cameron Slater is a far-right blogger, a fervent Christian man, the son of an Ex-National Party (Right wing political party) President and a man who believes that Whites are superior. A hunter of Animals and Men. Someone who called a recently deceased young man a “feral” on his blog. Ostensibly this was the reason a hacker named “Rawshark” hacked into Mr Slaters Gmail, Twitter and Facebook accounts and fed this data to Mr Nicky Hager and journalists at the New Zealand Herald.
And:
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Out of my own curiosity I began to investigate the possibilities for who the hacker could be. Shortly after this the Twitter handle @Whaledump popped up. Ostensibly this handle was the hacker themselves Rawshark. This account started to drop personal information, alongside more leaks, about Mr Slater and his alleged co-conspirators. I was interested to note that the first person it followed was @KimDotcom. The account made many challenges that their Operational Security was 100% tight and they would never be found. My curiosity now fully aroused, I began to have conversations with Mr Slater about who Rawshark could be. After some investigating Mr Slater asked me to speak to the Police task-force who were working the Rawshark hack case. I demurred as I did not have any clear and present evidence about the identity of Rawshark. And: I rang the Policeman who had left his card and enquired as to just exactly what he thought he was doing coming to my parents house and enquiring after me. I was very, very angry. My parents are Right-Wing voters who support the National Government and were looking askance at me now that cops were coming to their house. My parents are quiet people who don’t wish for any extra stress as they head into their 60s. The cop said that they had been “monitoring my twitter feed” and also that “Cameron Slater says you have inside knowledge of the Rawshark hack”. I politely replied that I would come down to the local Police Station and be interviewed. And: Back in late August, Whale and I had been exchanging Threema messages about the possible ID of “Rawshark”. Whale requested that I get in contact with a “trusted friend”. And: Nobody had any evidence of Bradbury and Harre connection to the Rawshark hack. And: Nobody had any evidence of Bradbury and Harre connection to the Rawshark hack. This is ‘Tomas’ seeing if I can, or anyone I know, get access to a Joomla site that was tied to who these people alleged was ‘Rawshark’. I did no cracking and left it. And: At this stage I was an undercover Police asset in both the investigation into Rawshark and the ongoing look at Mr Slater.
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There’s some doubt about Rachinger’s claims he was “an undercover Police asset”. And finally: Alongside this set of events, I had received word that the Identity of “Rawshark” was being spoken about in the Press Gallery and also by persons that Mr Slater had spoken to. I sent out the now infamous tweet “I am Rawshark” in a show of solidarity for whom this person was believed to be. They had recently had a baby. She was days old at this point. This appears to be a reasonable explanation, that the “I am Rawshark” tweet was nothing more than an “I am Spartacus” type support comment. Rachinger wasn’t the first to do ‘I am Rawshark”. His tweet was on 31 October 2014. A number of commenters at The Standard changed their pseudonyms to include ‘Rawshark’ in their names (and some still do). In a thread on 7 October:
Dialey 7 October 2014 at 9:42 am Time for a little mischief making – started on TDB, the declaration based on the slave revolt in the film Spartacus
I am Rawshark
Join the revolution, declare your solidarity wekarawshark 7 October 2014 at 9:49 am I am Rawshark.
There’s many references and pseudonym changes in the thread on How far will the harassment of Hager go?
This would appear to be where it started, at The Daily Blog on October 6:
OVICULA says: OCTOBER 6, 2014 AT 8:58 PM
I am Rawshark.
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It seems very unlikely Rachinger had any involvement with Rawshark or the hacking of Slater.
http://yournz.org/2015/06/07/rachingers-i-am-rawshark-tweet/
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Pete George (Your NZ): The Standard’s ‘not Labour’ problem
Something that came up, again, with Ben Rachinger’s story yesterday was The Standard’s connections with the Labour Party.
Cameron Slater’s alleged attempted hack of The Standard was to find proof that Labour staffers were Standard authors. This was to be used to embarrass Andrew Little on the first day of Parliament this year, as Little had stated their were no Labour staffers blogging.
This was interesting in itself, as Slater apparently hadn’t noticed that The Standard had already distanced itself from Parliamentary staffers who had been writing and contributing blog posts.
In it’s obsession with appearing to be non-Labour late last year Lynn Prentice announced he had resigned as a Labour Party member.
Prentice and others go ballistic and sometimes ban people who claim The Standard is a Labour Party blog.
Which seems to be futile. Most people don’t differentiate between ‘a labour left blog of individual authors’ and ‘a Labour Party blog’.
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It’s not just righties and people wanting to have a dig or push buttons at The Standard. In a post yesterday left of labour left blogger Martyn Bradbury wrote in a post:
Compare that to Ben Rachinger who has made a complaint to Police with evidence showing Slater allegedly paying Rachinger over $9000 for black ops information and plotting a cyber crime to hack into a Labour Party blog.
Bradbury is wrong – I don’t think The Standard is ‘a Labour Party blog’.
The Standard frequently points this out, and took the opportunity yesterday to do so through a post by Anthony Robins, Welcome to The Standard.
This blog started in August 2007. Our About page really needs updating, but basically The Standard is a bunch of people who write on the same blog. There is no central organisation, there often isn’t agreement. We come from a variety of backgrounds and have many political affiliations, some support Labour, some The Greens, some Mana (and some no party at all).
The administration (and most of the operating costs) of the blog is all the work of lprent (Lynn Prentice). Although it is a lie often told about us this is NOT a Labour Party blog, and there is no control from Labour – the way we have disagreed on, disagreed with, and attacked various Labour leaders should be proof enough of that. Almost every current author is someone
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We are the loosest possible collective, a group of lefties / progressives who care, and write, and respect each other’s opinions even when we disagree. There’s a list of currently active authors at the end of the post.
This is a typical Labour Party denial at The Standard. For some reason they want to be seen as not the Labour Party.
Why do they not want to be seen as associated with Labour? That baffles me. Labour desperately needs a strong identity, including a strong online identity.
Perhaps The Standard thinks that it’s frequently abusive nature (led by example by lprent/Prentice) isn’t a good look for the Party. And that they want to use resident trolls to attack and try to drive away anyone not deemed ‘labour left’ enough, including Labour Party supporters and people that Labour needs to attract without reprimand from the party.
But this attempt at separation from the Labour Party is futile. And highly hypocritical as their authors frequently try to associate everything Cameron Slater at Whale Oil and David Farrar at Kiwiblog post with the National Party.
It’s particularly futile because of the associations of the active authors. Robins posted:
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Authors About 70 people have written for The Standard over the years. For the record, here’s a list of those who are currently active (have written at least once this year). Those who write under their own names or are well known are: Mike Smith, lprent (Lynn Prentice), Helen Kelly, Bryan Gould, Mandy Hager, Stephanie Rodgers, mickysavage (Greg Presland), Anthony Robins (r0b), Ben Clark. Those who prefer to write under partial names or pseudonyms are Tracey, Bill, te reo putake, Bunji, BLiP, KJT, RedLogix, Natwatch and stargazer (sincere apologies to anyone I have missed!).
Prentice has only just resigned as a long term Labour Party member. He has often bragged about his association with Helen Clark. He is closer to being a Labour Party blogger (though technically not one) than a labour left blogger.
His fellow Standard trustee Mike Smith is an ex General Secretary of the Labour Party and employed adviser to Labour Party leaders. In the past he has blogged as a Labour staffer.
Neither of these two post very often but Prentice is prominent in site moderation which often involves ignoring the breaking of rules by Labour leaning commenters and making up excuses to berate and ban non-Labour participants.
Robins is a regular author currently. He has also been an active Labour Party member and has been involved in Labour’s Dunedin North election campaigns.
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Greg Presland is one of the most regular authors currently (as mickysavage) and is also prominent as a Standard organiser. Every Standard post is promoted on Twitter under his name and under @thestandard:
Presland is best known in politics not as being active in the Labour Party, not as as active in David Cunliffe’s New Lynn electorate and in West Auckland for Labour, but as Cunliffe’s donations trust lawyer and organiser.
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Why Prentice, Robins and Presland go to such lengths to distance themselves from the Labour Party is baffling.
Of the other (occasional) authors that Robins lists:
Bryan Gould – has just been prominent as one of the authors of the Labour election review (and has been a British Labour Party MP.
Helen Kelly is seen as sympathetic to and closely associated with the Labour Party. She is often mentioned as a future Labour candidate/MP.
Stephanie Rodgers is a Labour Party member who was active in last year’s election campaign.
Ben Clark is an ex Labour Party candidate.
Te Reo Putake is an active Labour Party member.
These authors cover most of the ‘named’ author posts at The Standard.
The other most prolific ‘authors are:
Natwatch – mostly does anti-National attack posts.
Notices and Features – this is what the routine Open Mike and Daily Review posts are done under, plus reposts from other blogs, but opinions sneak in at times and it’s often used to promote anti-National posts.
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So while these authors might be “a bunch of people who write on the same blog” they happen to be a bunch of people with mostly active Labour Party associations or long histories with the Labour Party.
It doesn’t matter much whether there are still Parliamentary staffers in the roster or not.
And The Standard has a perception problem they can’t do much about. The use of pseudonyms, especially like ‘Natwatch’ – leaves them open to speculation about what sort of party association the authors might have.
I think the Standard obsession with trying to disassociate themselves from the Labour Party is a symptom of the Party’s problem.
If New Zealand’s most prominent Labour connected blog keeps trying to distance themselves from the party it doesn’t show much faith or confidence or pride in the Party then it’s a sad outlook for Labour.
One thing is apparent – the Standard is barely promotes the Labour Party. They mostly attack the National party.
They could probably be better described as an anti-National Party blog.
Like many voters they seem to have given up on being proud of the Labour Party.
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The Standard is similar to the Labour Party in a way. Like the party they have become a narrow minded bunch of activists who don’t want to listen to any alternative to their outdated political views and aims.
They abuse and actively drive away moderate voters who used to support Labour.
And they wonder why “the missing million” don’t want to vote for them.
The Standard actively entrenches a ‘not ready for Government’ perception – and blames everyone and everything else for their problems.
They have lost any pride or confidence in their own Party.
All they can muster is a ‘trash-National’ bash wagon in the hope that voters will eventually see National as worse than Labour. Those left voting.
The Standard’s ‘not-Labour’ problem inadvertently highlights why New Zealand continues to vote not-Labour.
If there’s ever a blog that rises, that proudly promotes and supports the Labour Party, that welcomes a wide range of opinions, that debates things that really matter, then there could be some hope for a Labour revival. Don’t look to The Standard for it.
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Frank Macskasy (Daily Blog): The Curious Case of Cameron Slater, the Hacker, and the unforgivable crime of stupidity June 7, 2015
Cameron Slater is not a well man.
A recent exposé by TV3’s ‘The Nation‘ revealed that Cameron Slater has allegedly been conspiring with IT consultant, Ben Rachinger, to hack left-wing blogsite, ‘The Standard‘ to steal personal information.
According to a NZ Herald report, the matter is now evidently a matter of a Police investigation;
“The complaint is being investigated by Counties Manukau CIB.
There are a number of complexities to the investigation, including the posting online of documentation which has already compromised the investigation and is making our inquires more difficult.
Police are taking a cautious approach, and working through a number of complex steps to gather the necessary information to advance the enquiry.
Any decision on charges is some way off at this stage, and will be made after a thorough assessment of all relevant information.”
Any potential charges would most likely relate to attempting to procure a crime, if the allegations are found to have merit.
This alleged txt-message from Slater to Rachinger alone, seems to be an admission that he was fully aware of the dubious, and potentially illegal, nature of his activities;
“It’s no small thing I’m doing this, I could be being set up in a sting by a media person or cops.”
His ISP may also take a dim view if he has been using his internet connection for nefarious purposes.
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Aside from the sheer illegality of these allegations, three things stand out in this grubby affair;
1. If proven, it seems that Cameron Slater’s desire for revenge on those he perceives have slighted him, is a psychopathy that reveals a deeply troubled human being.
In which case, Slater requires psychiatric attention, not prison or a fine.
2.If proven, it demonstrates that Slater has little hesitation in circumventing or breaking the law. He was convicted in September 2010 of eight counts of breaching name suppression orders and one count of identifying a victim in a sex case on his blog. He is currently being sued by Auckland businessman, Matthew Blomfield, in a defamation case.
3.If proven, Slater’s behaviour is worse than a simple matter of law-breaking – it shows his sheer stupidity in thinking that an attempt to hack another website could be done without being discovered.
Has he learned nothing from Nicky Hager’s ‘Dirty Politics’, in that it is virtually impossible to keep secrets in a small country like ours?
With certain exceptions, stupidity is the most unforgiving crime of all. It appears that Slater has learned nothing from recent experiences. Life’s lessons seem to have little value for this tragic character.
. .
.
References
TV3: The Nation – More Dirty Politics?
NZ Herald: Right-wing blogger accused of paying off hacker
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Fairfax media: Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater guilty
Previous related blogposts
That was Then, This is Now #25 – Keeping the buggers “honest”
Latest from Whaledump2 – Jordan Williams and Cameron Slater
When Karma caught up with Cameron Slater
Are Cameron Slater and Judith Collins bare-faced liars?
The Slater-Key Txt-Messages Trip-Up – Did Cameron Slater Plan this?
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/06/07/the-curious-case-of-cameron-slater-the- hacker-and-the-unforgivable-crime-of-stupidity/
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Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Compare how long Slater’s complaint gets investigated to investigations against him June 6, 2015
Cough, cough…
Right-wing blogger accused of paying off hacker
Right-wing blogger Cameron Slater has been accused of paying a man to hack into an opposition website for political gain.
The controversial and outspoken political commentator denies the claims, but police have reportedly confirmed they are investigating the allegations made by Ben Rachinger.
So let’s get this straight – Cameron Slater makes a complaint to the NZ Police that his emails were hacked and stolen on August 28th 2014. By October 2nd 2014, the NZ Police had 5 Officers search Nicky Hager’s house for 10 hours. That’s 36 days.
Nicky is an investigative journalist and computers seized have information on police corruption that Nicky is next investigating.
Compare that to Ben Rachinger who has made a complaint to Police with evidence showing Slater allegedly paying Rachinger over $9000 for black ops information and plotting a cyber crime to hack into a Labour Party blog.
That allegation has taken over 4 months for Police to do anything and the Police say it will be months before anything might be done.
Ummmmmm. WTF?
Slater, who has been outed for dirty politics get his complaint against an investigative reporter actioned within 36 days that sees that investigative reporter’s house searched and evidence of police corruption seized, yet a complaint where evidence is available that clearly suggests a crime being plotted and paid for and it’s taken 3 months with no end in sight?
In other countries this is called out right political corruption of the Police force. In NZ it will probably get ignored.
We should get Native Affairs or Campbell Live to focus on this – oh wait.
I hope the irony of Campbell Live being replaced with 90 minutes of back to back police propaganda isn’t lost on anyone.
Key & Slater win again? I predict Key getting lots of photo ops of cuddling kittens over the next 48 hours. http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/06/06/compare-how-long-slaters-complaint- gets-investigated-to-investigations-against-him/
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Pete George (Your NZ): Rachinger tweets Slater statement on his claims
Cameron Slater has released a statement on the claims made by Ben Rachinger, as announced by Rachinger on Twitter. Rachinger had first tweeted:
Ben Rachinger @ B3nRaching3r 5h5 hours ago Thanks for giving me a chance to put the evidence and my side of the story in public arena. The story speaks for itself. @TheNationTV3 Then: Ben Rachinger @ B3nRaching3r 39 minutes ago Thank you for your words Mr Slater. You were somewhat kind. Below is Mr Slaters last word on my allegations.
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Slater has made this all about Rachinger. He has not addressed any of the claims, not any of the communications that have been
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 36 of 309 revealed, nor any of the payments made to Rachinger. Slater has not denied any specifics about trying to solicit hacking of The Standard. He refuses to respond, while trying to dump all of the attention on Rachinger. More from Rachinger:
Ben Rachinger @ B3nRaching3r 18m18 minutes ago I will prepare my own statement and release this in due course. For now I’m taking some time out to be with my loved ones. Thanks. Interesting to see his pinned tweet from several days ago Ben Rachinger @ B3nRaching3r May 2 Do you believe whistleblowers should be protected by law except if they’ve committed heinous crimes? RT if you do.
He seems to see himself as a whistleblower. http://yournz.org/2015/06/06/rachinger-tweets-slater-statement-on-his-claims/
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Pete George (Your NZ): Slater talks to Fairfax, contradicts
It appears that Cameron Slater has talked to Fairfax regarding the Rachinger accusations –Cameron Slater denies hacking allegations.
Some of what he is reported to have said seems very odd – why would someone who has admitted to being financially stressed keep handing out generous loans? And some of it is contradictory, with Slater saying he knows nothing of any police investigation but has “given them everything” (the police).
Controversial blogger Cameron Slater is denying allegations that he offered to pay for a hack into left-wing blogThe Standard.
IT consultant Ben Rachinger told TV 3’s The Nation Slater offered him $5000 to get the website’s internal mailing list.
Rachinger said he declined the right-wing blogger’s offer.
Rachinger told The Nation the offer was made by text where Slater said he wanted “all MPs outed”.
“He asked me, ‘I want you to focus on this job of getting into The Standard, I’ve got $5000 available for it’,” he said.
However, Slater has denied these claims, saying “it’s total and utter bulls***”.
Slater said he was not surprised by the allegations but they were not true.
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In the past Rachinger had asked Slater for money when he was in a tough spot, he said.
Slater said he did not recall the exact amount he gave to Rachinger.
“It would be $500 here and $500 there.
So Slater has admitted giving Rachinger money. This looks very odd, considering the financial pressure Slater has admitted to being under, and the amount of fund raising Whale Oil has been doing. It may be true but it would surprise me.
“I’m a generous person, I help people out when they’re in trouble but sometimes people bite the hand that helps them out.”
How many people does he drip feed $500 loans to while at the same time claiming he’s broke on Whale Oil?
However, the loans given to Rachinger had been taken out of context, he said.
The context is now even muddier now.
Rachinger said the pair discussed the plan but Slater would not name who was funding the hack.
He said he was only told the “funders aren’t the Nats”.
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There appears to be evidence of ‘funders’ being involved in the communications. So this doesn’t add up; with the claims of loans. Who would fund Slater to dish out loans to people?
A police spokesman said police received a complaint regarding an alleged attempt to procure the hacking of a computer system and it was being investigated by Counties Manukau CIB.
“There are a number of complexities to the investigation, including the posting online of documentation which has already compromised the investigation, which is making our inquires more difficult.”
Police were taking a “cautious approach” and any decision on charges was “some way off”, he said.
Slater said he was not aware of any police investigation and he had not been contacted by police in relation to these allegations.
Ok. But…
“I’ve got nothing to hide from any police investigation.”
“I’ve been totally open with the police…I’ve given them my computer, I’ve given them my phone, I’ve given them everything voluntarily.”
This needs clarifying, it just doesn’t make sense. Slater is reported as saying “he was not aware of any police investigation” but has “been totally open with the police” and “I’ve given them
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That’s contradictory. This raises more questions than it answers.
http://yournz.org/2015/06/06/slater-talks-to-fairfax-contradicts/
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Pete George (Your NZ): Links on Ben Rachinger accusations
As it looks like the Ben Rachinger accusations (versus Cameron Slater) are getting an airing on The Nation this morning here’s some link to some of his tweets and posts and related information that I have collated:
§ Ben Rachinger versus Cameron Slater – February 17
§ Rachinger previously – February 17
§ More on Rachinger accusations – February 20
§ Rachinger versus Slater continued – April 27
§ Benjamin Rachinger posts – April 29
§ Rachinger’s ‘paid to hack The Standard’ claim – May 3
§ Rachinger continues on Twitter – May 4
§ Lauda Finem versus Rachinger – May 4
§ Rachinger tweeting again – May 5
§ Lauda Finem versus The Standard – May 5
§ Matthew Blomfield using Rachinger against Slater? – May 7
§ Matthew Blomfield responds – May 7
§ Does Slater run Lauda Finem? – May 7
§ Rachinger disappearing from sight online – May 11
§ Rachinger disappearing from sight online – May 13
Rachinger went quiet after that. Over that kast week or two he started to tweet unrelated information and comments. Until today:
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§ The Nation on Rachinger and Slater versus The Standard – June 6
§ Rachinger tweets Slater statement on his claims – June 6
§ Slater talks to Fairfax, contradicts – June 6 http://yournz.org/2015/06/06/links-in-ben-rachinger-accusations/
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Pete George (Your NZ): The Nation on Rachinger and Slater versus The Standard
The Nation this morning reported on investigating Ben Rachinger’s claims that Cameron Slater paid him to hack The Standard.
I’ve seen most of this information before (and have posted much of it here over the last four months – see Links on Ben Rachinger accusations). There were a few tweets I haven’t seen but not much.
So mostly what this does is bring to a wider audience what was already out on the Internet.
The Nation say that the police are investigating this but any decision on whether to prosecute will be some time away as it is a complex case.
I doubt the evidence reaches the ‘compelling’ level but there’s reasonable evidence that Slater was paying Rachinger and communications between Slater and Rachinger woulld support a possibility, and that may be a reasonably high possibility, that Slater was trying to obtain information from The Standard that would probably need to be illegally obtained.
A possible defence would be that Slater was hoping Rachinger would find an open door into The Standard as Slater had found (or been pointed at) on a Labour party website.
Slater had claimed that as this was publicly accessible information he hadn’t obtained information illegally, although the manner in which he exploited the security flaw could easily be seen as malicious.
Slater was given a right to respond but he turned that down, he offered no specific denials, but did state he has not done anything illegal.
Standard owner Lynn Prentice was interviewed but didn’t contribute much apart from saying that he thought that no one had breached Standard security, and pointing out how hypocritical Slater is complaining (a lot) about being hacked but appearing to actively dig dirty data from another blog.
Rachinger admitted that he hadn’t always acted properly.
He said he tried to do some amateur detective work to expose Slater and had got in over his head. Not mentioned on The Nation were his claims he had been working as a police informant.
While there’s good evidence he was paid a number of sums of money by Slater it would appear that he didn’t deliver any hacked data – Slater had expressed annoyance at not getting any results.
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Rachinger claims that he didn’t breach Standard security and didn’t obtain any data. That could be seen as obtaining money off Slater by deception.
As most of the information revealed today was already known this doesn’t add much to the convoluted story except that it gives it more publicity.
Ironically Slater is currently promoting a Whale Oil tenth birthday event next Wednesday that he has called ‘Decade of Dirt’ so he is still promoting his political sleaziness. Tickets are $150 to attend.
Any politician with any future ambition will probably be avoiding Decade of Dirt and Slater as much as possible. Or at least avoiding any visible association.
While probably not conclusive evidence what The Nation has highlighted today is the risk of any association with Slater.
UPDATE: The Nation has the video link up now:
More Dirty Politics?
An exclusive Nation investigation into allegations blogger Cameron Slater commissioned a hack of left-wing website The Standard.
A former confidant of Slater’s has supplied The Nation with documents and texts raising serious questions about their online activities – Lisa Owen delves into them.
UPDATE 2: And Prentice has added a comment:
Good thing they didn’t use my closing comment then. Something like “Cameron Slater is the arsehole of the local internet”
While there’s justification for him being grumpy about this Lynn is not the most pleasant person on the local internet either. http://yournz.org/2015/06/06/the-nation-on-rachinger-and-slater-versus-the- standard/
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Pete George (Your NZ): Rachinger on The Nation?
There’s been suggestions that The Nation will be covering the Ben Rachinger accusations tomorrow.
Lynn Prentice hints at something on The Standard last night:
The Nation this weekend looks like it is going to be interesting.
Anyone know what time it airs? I may have to do something unusual and head to a house that has a functioning TV aerial.
And:
I am sworn to confidentiality.
Today on Twitter:
The Nation @ TheNationTV3 20h20 hours ago Just been doing the hard yards on a major Nation investigation for this weekend. Tune in 9.30am Sat/ 10am Sun Bryce Edwards retweeted The Nation Bryce Edwards @ bryce_edwards
Is TV3 about to do a expose on the Ben Rachinger Dirty Politics story? Sounds like it.
We’ll find out tomorrow.
Some of the back story:Benjamin Rachinger posts
UPDATE:
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This weekend on The Nation…
An investigation into allegations of more dirty politics by blogger Cameron Slater. A former confidant of Slater’s has supplied The Nation with documents and texts raising serious questions about his online activities. Lisa Owen has an exclusive report. http://www.voxy.co.nz/politics/nation-weekend/5/223215
http://yournz.org/2015/06/05/rachinger-on-the-nation/
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Matthew Dentith: Episode 49 – The @B3nRaching3r Allegations Written by Matthew Dentith on May 15th, 2015
Written by Matthew Dentith on May 15th, 2015. Leave a comment
Table of contents for The @B3nRaching3r Allegations 1. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part One 2. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Two 3. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Three 4. Episode 49 – The @B3nRaching3r Allegations In which Josh and meself talk about the Ben Rachinger allegations of conspiratorial wrongdoing by Cameron Slater and Company, along with the claim that the real conspiracy is one against the “fine” people at Lauda Finem.
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2. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Three 3. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part One 4. The Naked Contempt of John Ansell http://all-embracing.episto.org/2015/05/15/episode-49-the-b3nraching3r- allegations/
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Pete George (Your NZ): Standard goes dirty on dirty politics?
The Nation is promoting:
Tomorrow morning on The Nation, an investigation into allegations of more dirty politics by blogger Cameron Slater. A former confidant of Slater’s has supplied The Nation with documents, texts and bank statements raising serious questions about his online activities and plans to hit back against some of those who attacked him last year.
So what was “the mission” that these two men embarked on? Lisa Owen has an exclusive report.
This is believed to be about the Ben Rachinger accusations that Slater paid him to hack The Standard.
Lynn Prentice has also hinted at revelations which suggests he thinks they will be favourable to The Standard, or at least will dump on Slater, someone he has feuded with for years.
Prentice has admitted assisting Nicky Hager with his ‘Dirty Politics’ book but hasn’t said to what extent that assistance went.
The Standard post includes a ‘ben rachinger’ tag which is a good indication he is involved.
If Slater did pay to have The Standard hacked that would be both playing dirty and highly hypocritical of Slater, who has frequently slammed Hager and the hacking of his
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So Prentice and The Standard may be justified in basking in utu.
But The Standard may be playing dirty themselves on this. They have posted a teaser for The Nation – ‘they’ being the anonymous NOTICES AND FEATURES
Included on this post is a photo of Slater with John Key and David Farrar.
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NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 52 of 309
And on their home page they are promoting a Slater/Key link:
If they know that the item on The Nation will implicate or prove involvement of Key and Farrar then this may be fair enough.
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If there is no link that Key or Farrar had any involvement, especially Key, then this would be cynical dirty politics from The Standard.
UPDATE: posted at The Standard by Weka
“@lprent: @lprent On my 56th birthday. I go on camera for the first time in the seven years of running The Standards systems. Clean up NZ politics …”
That’s a bit ironic considering how dirty Lynn plays at The Standard.
UPDATE: there was no accusations of anyone beyond Slater except for a funder who was ‘not a Nat. So trying to link Key and Farrar to this story was dirty politics from The Standard. http://yournz.org/2015/06/06/standard-goes-dirty-on-dirty-politics/
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Pete George (Your NZ): Slater’s statement on Rachinger looks dirty
Cameron Slater supplied a media statement in response to Ben Rachinger’s claims that have been publicised on The Nation and via various other media this weekend.
Supplying the statement as a JPG image was a curious ways to have presented this statement. The font used is also curious. Here is the statement as text, with some comments.
Saturday June 5th, 2015
I have been aware that Ben Rachinger has been on a personal campaign to take a number of conflicting stories to the world as the truth.I have continued to ignore this and left it pass without comment. in spite of the many untrue statements he has fabricated around cherry picked screenshot ‘evidence’. So whenever I was approached by the media to provide comment on Ben’s claims, I declined. I’m going to continue to do so. This is the only public statement I will make on this matter.
Despite this Slater seems to have also provided comment to Fairfax, as reported inCameron Slater denies hacking allegations. It is somewhat ironic that it is Mediaworks running this story and all without disclosing the ben was working for them earlier in the year as a consultant.
Mediaworks is a major radio and television outlet. Journalists from other media also took an interest in the case.
What is ironic that Slater thinks it’s an issue that Ben was a Mediaworks consultant – Slater does not generally disclose who he consults for when he posts about those interests in his own media.
Ben is an extremely talented young man, but he operates without any sense of guidance or direction.
The bouquet followed by a brickbat approach.
Slater could easily be described as operating without any apparent sense of guidance or direction at times.
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When he made contact with me, and we built a relationship, it was mostly on the basis of me being a mentor to him. He had problems. Some of them very personal problems. He asked for advice. He wanted help. And I provided both.
Most if not all of that could easily have applied with reversed roles.
After a while, it became clear to me that his behaviour was erratic. His decision making inconsistent. His previous commitments and commitments to me proved worthless. And whereas we had started on the basis of trust, it became clear that he was now acting in a way to not only damage me, but also himself.
Again much of that could also apply to Slater. How many people can trust him? Or not trust him?
In spite of the fact that I still had empathy for him, there was little I could draw a line under it and move on.
Since we parted, I’ve tried to to protect Ben from himself, and was successful for a while. When different media repeatedly came sniffing around for a story, I would give them some advice that this wasn’t what it appeared, and all they could end up doing was hurt Ben more. Until today, those media had the decency not to throw Ben under the bus in the forlorn hope of a few extra ratings points.
This isn’t the Slater who is well known publicly as someone who will strongly attack someone who he thinks has crossed him or has threatened his position.
It could easily be surmised that Slater could be diverting attention and blame and is projecting, is trying to protect himself.
Slater is a prolific publisher of self interested PR. That he has remained silent on this issue until yesterday raises suspicions.
Slater could be acting totally out of character on this one issue. Or not.
The only result of me telling my side of the story in full is to completely destroy whatever public credibility Ben has left.
I call bullshit on that. It looks very much like Slater is trying to destroy any credibility Ben has with this statement. And is making excuses for not addressing any of the issues and apparent facts that have so far been presented in public.
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It will also hurt other people that he’s managed to ensnare in his fantasies.
Usually the only people Slater usually seems to try to protect is himself and those he is working with and for. And here he appears to be trying to “completely destroy whatever public credibility Ben has left”.
He has to mature, grow up, and just move past this. Hopefully this latest phase has gotten it all out of his system.
I understand he has been monitored and interviewed by officials who have concerns about him. I can hope they succeed where I failed. Ben needs a strong role model and strict guidelines for him to channel his many talents.
This could be seen as Slater breaching confidentiality – a low blow. Someone who has suffered from mental health problems himself (he has revealed this publicly) should know better than this. Unless he was acting in his own interests only.
It should be noted that Slater frequently brags about playing dirty – his 10th Anniversary event on Wednesday is titled Decade of Dirt.
Personally I feel extremely betrayed and hurt by his campaign.
If this is genuine then Slater could perhaps reflect on the many times he has campaigned against other people – often in a dirty way.
Ben has abused my confidence and my generosity. But I won’t let that colour my future behaviour. When people come to me for advice and assistance, I will continue to make myself available.
Cameron Slater
—ENDS—
I don’t think Slater is seen by many as a generous, helpful person who will readily make himself available selflessly.
This just doesn’t sound like the legend Slater has created of himself. It’s hard to take this as a personal and genuine statement, there are too many contradictions with reality.
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It sounds more like a carefully worded attempt at diverting attention and culpability. While Slater claims to be acting in Ben’s interests he dumps on him.
After the end:
I will not respond to requests for interviews from anyone about this matter. All such requests will be declined.
If a political opponent of Slater’s issued a statement like the above, plus a refusal to answer to any of the substance of the issue, I can imagine he would be prolific in his condemnation and his assumptions and insinuations.
By acting out of character and refusing to engage on this Slater risks being seen as taking cheap at Ben while being in deliberate denial.
Rachinger has admitted being imperfect in all of this, but he has provided enough proof to raise some serious concerns.
Trying to portray himself as a total good guy a tough sell for Slater given his record. He’s more practiced at playing the victim card.
If Slater genuinely cared for Ben’s welfare I can imagine much better ways of making a statement.
Slater is denying any wrongdoing and is trying to divert attention and blame. This statement looks like an attempt to throw Ben under the bus he claimed to be protecting him from.
It looks like it could be dirty business, something that isn’t uncommon in Slater’s arsenal.
Slater’s media release: http://yournz.org/2015/06/07/slaters-statement-on-rachinger-looks-dirty/
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Pete George (Your NZ): Serious accusations against Rachinger
A serious accusation is being made against Ben Rachinger, on Your NZ and via one Twitter account. As it so far appears to be a single source accusation with no evidence or corroboration I’m not prepared to post details.
In the meantime Rachinger’s Twitter account has become unavailable overnight.
If the allegation is true then it’s serious. But absent any evidence alarm bells are ringing.
I think Rachinger has provided sufficient evidence, online and via The Nation in the weekend, to raise serious concerns about Cameron Slater trying to solicit the hacking of The Standard.
I’m aware there are claims that this has been a sting by Rachinger, and a person behind this has been named. I haven’t seen sufficient evidence to give details – and the person has a litigious history.
The new accusation against Rachinger would appear to be a separate issue. The timing is suspicious – it could be legitimate and it could have just come to light, or it could be a deliberate diversionary smear against Rachinger.
If anyone comments on this here I urge caution about what details you publish. If there are legal risks I may edit comments.
Supporting evidence is needed if this accusation is going to stand up.
Either way this is serious – if the accusation has merit it’s serious for Rachinger, if it’s bogus and a smear attempt then it’s serious for those promoting it.
If anyone has information that is too risky to post email it to me ([email protected]) and let me decide on the authenticity and the risks of publishing. http://yournz.org/2015/06/08/serious-accusations-against-rachinger/
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Greg Presland (The Standard): Cameron Slater’s statement on Ben Rachinger WrittenBy: MICKYSAVAGE - Date published:8:10 am, June 8th, 2015 - 21 comments Categories: uncategorized - Tags: ben rachinger, cameron slater, dirty politics As far as I can ascertain Cameron Slater has released one statement about the allegations made against him by Ben Rachinger aired on the Nation last weekend.
Slater is a self confessed social media guru. His statement does not appear to be on his own site. He posts multiple posts every day but obviously must have missed doing this.
The only media where I have seen his statement is on Twitter. This must be an oversight. His statement was posted as a jpg and is not searchable. Google will not let you know what he said. So as a public service job to a fellow blogger I thought that I should post the text. That way we can appreciate the full details of Cameron’s response.
Here it is …
Saturday June 5th, 2015
I have been aware that Ben Rachinger has been on a personal campaign to take a number of conflicting stories to the world as the truth. I have continued to ignore this and let it pass without comment, in spite of the many untrue statements he has fabricated around cherry picked screenshot ‘evidence’. So whenever I was approached by the media to provide comments on Ben’s claims, I declined. I’m going to continue to do so. This is the only public statement I will make on this matter.
It is somewhat ironic that it is Mediaworks running this story and all without disclosing that [B]en was working for them earlier in the year as a consultant.
Ben is an extremely talented young man, but he operates without any sense of guidance or direction. When he made contact with me, and we built a relationship, it was mostly on the basis of me being a mentor to him. He had problems. Some of them very personal ones. He asked for advice. He wanted help. And I provided both.
After a while, it became clear to me that his behaviour was erratic. His decision making inconsistent. His previous promises and commitments to me proved worthless. And whereas we started on the basis of trust, it became obvious that he was now acting in a way to not only damage me, but also himself.
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In spite of the fact that I still have empathy for him, there was little I could do but draw a line under it and move on.
Since we parted, I’ve tried to protect Ben from himself, and was successful for a while. When different media repeatedly came sniffing around for a story, I would give them advice that this wasn’t what it appeared, and all they would end up doing was to hurt Ben more. Until today, those media had the decency not to throw Ben under the bus in the forlorn hope of a few extra ratings points.
The only result of me telling my side of the story in full is to completely destroy whatever public credibility Ben has left. It will also hurt other people that he’s managed to ensnare in his fantasies. He has to mature, grow up, and just move past this. Hopefully this latest phase has gotten it all out of his system.
I understand that he has been monitored and interviewed by officials who have concerns about him. I can but hope that they succeed where I failed. Ben needs a strong role model and strict guidance for him to channel [h]is many talents.
Personally I feel extremely betrayed and hurt by is campaign. Ben has abused my confidence and my generosity. But I won’t let it colour my future behaviour. When people come to me for advice and assistance, I will continue to make myself available.
Cameron Slater”
Two questions I have though are (as asked on twitter) why donations would be paid out of a business account? And what did Slater mean when he referred to “funders”? http://thestandard.org.nz/cameron-slaters-statement-on-ben-rachinger/
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TV3: Andrew Little: 'Toxic' Cameron Slater not wanted in NZ politics Dan Satherley Online Reporter Monday 8 Jun 2015 10:11 a.m.
Labour leader Andrew Little's not surprised Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater is allegedly back playing dirty politics, spreading "filth and his sleaze".
TV3's The Nation at the weekend revealed claims he paid Auckland IT consultant Ben Rachinger to hack into left-leaning website The Standard. Mr Rachinger took the money, but didn't carry out the hack, instead carrying out his own "ad hoc" investigation into Mr Slater's activities.
The allegation is being investigated by police, and Mr Little says it's not a good look for the National Party, which has close ties to Mr Slater.
"Cameron Slater is probably the most toxic influence on New Zealand politics that we've ever had, and a most unwelcome one," he told RadioLIVE.
"It beggars belief any politician – like John Key and Judith Collins – wants to have anything to do with him."
Among Mr Rachinger's claims are that Mr Slater wanted to reveal the identities of anonymous bloggers at The Standard, and "destroy them".
Slater denies any wrongdoing, saying he's been set up.
"I don't break the law, that's the end of the story," he said.
Mr Little is pleased the police are investigating the claims,
"We just don't need people like Cameron Slater with his filth and his sleaze running around as part of the New Zealand political scene."
Police say the investigation is "complex", and any decision on charges that may be laid is "some way off". http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/andrew-little-toxic-cameron-slater-not- wanted-in-nz-politics-2015060810#axzz3cQ20rgxF
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Martyn Bradbury: Could this really be the end of Cameron Slater?
The magnitude of criminal offending alleged in the hacking scandal enveloping Cameron Slater could well spell the end of Whaleoil.
Beyond the defamation case against Cameron, the current Police investigation (which seems to be crawling along) has the potential to bring charges of a serious enough nature that could see Cameron serve prison time.
The case will hang on, whether Cameron paid Ben, what the $9100 was paid for, and whether it is Cameron who sent the text messages. The encryption program they use in those discussions makes it very difficult to claim that they weren’t sent from a designated phone.
What suggests that Cameron is in deep trouble is the fact that he has not mentioned to it once on his own blog. He tweeted his response in a format difficult to google online… …I suppose when he has been asking his readers for contributions, news that he may have been paying a hacker $9100 won’t go down well with his supporters. If Cam goes down, will it be in a blaze of glory or will he whimper out? All eyes are now on the Police investigation. http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/06/08/could-this-really-be-the-end-of-cameron- slater/
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Matthew Dentith: The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Four Written by Matthew Dentith on June 8th, 2015. Leave a comment The Ben Rachinger (and I must apologise to Ben for so consistently mispronouncing his name on the podcast; it irritated me when the people behind Lauda Finem couldn’t do enough due diligence to spell my surname correctly, so sorry) story has been picked up by the media. There was the story on TV3’s “The Nation” (http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/thenation/more-dirty-politics- 2015060612) and then a story in the New Zealand Herald (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11 460942). Rachinger himself had been suggesting on Twitter, despite prior claims to the contrary, that all was good in the mainstream media just a few weeks back, which is when I think we can date the Nation taking an interest in the story.
Rachinger’s story, as presented in the 10 or so minutes on the Nation, is interesting precisely because of how it differs from Rachinger’s narrative in the now deleted Medium posts. The story we saw on Saturday morning is simple and concise; Rachinger first got in contact with Slater when the Whaleoil blog was hit by a denial of service attack in early 2014. Rachinger offered to help Slater secure his site against further attacks, and they struck up a correspondence. This led to Rachinger being paid to do work for Slater. Eventually Rachinger was sufficiently trusted by Slater that he was asked to hack the Labour Party-aligned blog, the Standard. However, by this time Rachinger was well aware of the claims made against Slater in Nicky Hager’s book “Dirty Politics” and he decided to launch his own investigation/entrapment of Slater. So, whilst Slater thought Rachinger was hacking the Standard, Rachinger was simply pulling publicly available data from the site and giving it to Slater, who eventually worked out that he really was getting nothing useful, and thus terminated the relationship.
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The story on the Nation, then, is the story Rachinger posted on Medium but stripped of much of the ancillary and sometimes quite questionable details.
There is no hyperbole about Rachinger’s sacrifice or how he is being hounded by influential people and thus is on the run. There is no talk about the Tony Lentino job Slater tried to get for Rachinger. No discussion about Slater’s connection with the Israeli Embassy, and no attempt to link the Standard hack to David Farrar and Matthew Hooton. Just a simple story of a hacker who was asked to infiltrate a blog and took Cameron Slater for a ride.
Now, part of me would like to think that the calm, cautious reporting of the salient details is very much due to this series of blogposts, but realistically, it’s likely to be more the result of good journalism (rather than going “That Matt Denteth makes a lot of good points!”). It certainly was good reporting, and it shows that no matter how interesting you thought the Medium posts were, getting an actual journalist to present your story can do wonders.
The Nation story also plays down the police informant angle; there was nothing about how Rachinger was regularly meeting with a handler throughout his association with Slater. This leads on to what I find particularly interesting (I use the term “particularly interesting” so much now that it’s almost lost all meaning) with this version of the story; there was little to no discussion as to when Rachinger decided to start his one person investigation/entrapment of Slater.1 This is important, because according to numerous internet commentators (including myself), either Rachinger went in at the beginning as a noble hacker intent on blowing open Slater’s criminal activities (what we might call the “Noble Rachinger” hypothesis) or Rachinger was sincere in his offer to help Slater and later came to regret his association (the “Credulous Rachinger” hypothesis) or Rachinger was an eager and willing accomplice to Slater who then was either burnt by Slater or burnt Slater, causing them to become enemies (the “Suspicious Rachinger” theory). I think it’s fair to say that Rachinger’s deleted
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Medium posts and (for the moment) inaccessible tweets slip and slide between the Noble and Credulous hypotheses. Yet a lot of people side with the Suspicious hypothesis because they either: a) claim to have been in correspondence with Rachinger over the period of time he was working for or with Slater, and thus they say this correspondence reflects a different story from the one Rachinger has presented, or b) they cite Rachinger’s past behaviour online (doxing, threatening to contact people’s employers, et cetera) and argue that there is no reason to charitably assume Rachinger was acting nobly.
Myself? I suspect some version of the Credulous or Suspicious hypothesis is the most likely, given his past behaviour, the nature of some of the correspondence Rachinger leaked and the fact he came to the attention of Slater due to a video which criticised one of the people on Slater’s hit list, Kim Dotcom.
That, however, is by-the-by; the story we saw on the Nation states that Rachinger was bluffing Slater by the time it came to the request that the Standard be hacked. If we accept that to be true, then what the Nation presented was clear evidence that Slater decided to pay someone to illegally access data on a blog as part of his ongoing #dirtypolitics campaign.
So, what to make of it all? I’m on record saying this needs to be investigated, and no matter what we think of Rachinger, the evidence seems reasonably clear (if we assume the various screenshots, bank account transactions and the like have not been faked) that Slater and some mysterious funder (more on that in a second) were happy to engage in a criminal conspiracy. Rachinger says very clearly he did not hack the Standard, and there are two good reasons to believe this. The first is that Slater’s response and subsequent falling out with Rachinger shows that he did not only thought he got nothing useful from Rachinger but also that he had been played. The second reason is that Lynn Prentice, the Editor at the Standard, claims there was no evidence of a hack.2
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Slater has, of course, denied criminal activity. In fact, he claims he operates entirely legally. As Russell Brown pointed out on Twitter, that’s just not true. (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4127070/Whale-Oil-blogger- Cameron-Slater-guilty), and Lynn Prentice has called Slater out on the hypocrisy of crying foul when his blog was hacked (which led to the eventual #dirtypolitics revelations) and then wanting to hack the Standard. The Herald story mentions that the Counties Manukau CIB are investigating Rachinger’s claims, but they also admit that Rachinger’s previous history of putting evidence online has complicated the investigation. This is a serious problem, because the investigated know what they are being investigated for and thus can work to answer those questions preemptively and to their favour. This is what I call the “Kerry Bolton defence”, named after the far-right, Aotearoa (New Zealand) based author Kerry Bolton. Bolton was accused of (as well as remove evidence online, ala the Kerry Bolton defence).
—
Admits he will not look good…
Doesn’t know who the funder is…
Notes 1. Indeed, the fact he refers to it as being his own investigation rather than one in which he was supposedly helping the police is interesting to the point that you would either think he made it up or the police asked the Nation not to mention it. 2. Although there are two reasons why Prentice might say that. The first is that the hack was successful and invisible. The second is that you might not want to admit to being hacked in the first place. However, given the evidence of the falling out between Slater and Rachinger, I think we should accept Prentice’s supporting claim here as good evidence that there was no hack.
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http://all-embracing.episto.org/2015/06/08/the-b3nraching3r-allegations-part- four/
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Matthew Dentith: The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part One
Written by Matthew Dentith on May 4th, 2015. Leave a comment Table of contents for The @B3nRaching3r Allegations 1. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part One Nota bene: In case people aren’t familiar with my work (which is quite possible), let me state for the record once again that my use of the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” are not meant pejoratively. I define a conspiracy theory as “any explanation of an event which cites a conspiracy as a salient cause” and conspiracy theorist as “anyone who believes a conspiracy theory”. My work to date has centred on showing how using general, non-pejorative definitions of “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” allows us to analyse the wider class of conspiratorial explanations and show that our suspicion of conspiracy theories is not warranted. Why not read my book and find out more? I am about to say something very annoying and it’s all Lee Basham’s fault: I am not here to render judgement about whether you should believe Ben Rachinger’s conspiracy theory. Rather, I’m here to shine a light on the epistemic issues. If you come away from this post with an opinion about the theory’s truth or falsity… Well, bully for you!
Why am I saying this? Well, it’s because I increasingly see myself more as someone who talks about how to talk about conspiracy theories, rather than an arbiter of whether said theories are warranted or unwarranted. It’s all Lee’s fault; he has been pressing me to keep to a studied agnosticism for s whole and just focus on providing people with a toolset and I’m finally convinced. My thinking conspiracy theory x or y is warranted doesn’t necessarily tell you that you should believe x or y. Rather, by explaining my reasoning and illustrating the necessary tools, you can come to your own conclusions. My role really should just be the whole teaching critical thinking about conspiracy theories, and we need a lot more of that than we need the whole “Person like Matthew tells you what you should think about this particular conspiracy theory!”
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So, let’s talk about the Rachinger allegations, shall we?
In short, Ben Rachinger, a former Young Nat (more on that in a subsequent post) got involved with Cameron Slater, aka Whale Oil, aka Canon Best Blogger award winner, aka a co-conspirator in the #dirtypolitics scandal of last year. Rachinger was either co-opted or volunteered to get involved in a spot of dirty politicking but eventually got cold feet about it. here and here). The whole point of the #dirtypolitics (which was named because it came out of Nicky Hager’s book, “Dirty Politics”) reveal last year was to show how elements of the National Party were using Cameron Slater and Company to attack the Opposition in order to make the Prime Minister, John Key, seem like the kind of guy who only says nice things and doesn’t engage in attack politics (a strategy that only works because hardly anyone watches Parliamentary TV and thus they don’t realise just how nasty that nice Mr. Key is in the debating chamber. He literally is someone who laughs at the notion children are going hungry). I reviewed Hager’s book at the time and found it to be mostly good. Rachinger’s allegations about his particular role in the #dirtypolitics saga provides more evidence of those dodgy dealings. On the face of it, they are quite damning and show that, on some level, the publication of “Dirty Politics” did nothing to stop #dirtypolitics. Still, before I go into full fisking mode of Rachinger’s claims, let’s take a step back and look at the landscape under which these allegations are being made. To do that, we unfortunately need to talk a little bit about Ben Rachinger.
Rachinger is, unfortunately, his own worst enemy when it comes to presenting and defending his case. The material up on Medium comes across clearly and concisely; it makes for interesting reading. However, Rachinger does not take criticism of his narrative well. For example, Carrie Stoddart and Giovanni Tiso have both questioned (in different ways and on different points) both the inferences he draws from the evidence and the legitimacy of his evidence (particularly whether he is acting ethically in releasing parts of it). Rachinger’s response in both cases was to attack the questioner, and imply that they were using
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 70 of 309 attack lines from a group who are out to smear him. This is a common tactic of his: on more than one occasion he has taken criticism of his argument to be criticism of his person, and then claimed such criticism originates from a third party, variously made up of people on the Left and/or the Right.1 I presume it’s more than one campaign, although the notion of Cameron Slater and, for the sake of a hyperbolic example, Giovanni Tiso sitting down to chair the “Stop Ben!” committee is an amusing thought. I can say that if there really is an organised smear campaign working against Rachinger, I am not privy to it (despite what certain conspiracists have said, I am not currently funded by the Establishment and do not wish to serve them). Such a campaign is not, however, beyond the bounds of possibility. Rachinger has pissed off a lot of people, some of whom are either powerful or, at least, think they are. It would certainly be in the interest of these people to smear Rachinger, in the same way it was in the interest of John Key’s Government to smear both Jon Stephenson and Nicky Hager for their revelations. Given that Rachinger, if we accept his story, will have got on the bad side of Cam Slater, and given that we know Slater holds grudges and, if we accept the claims of Hager in “Dirty Politics” that Slater goes out of his way to get revenge, then some of the opprobrium Rachinger is currently suffering might well be the product of Slater and his political machine. However, given that Rachinger’s modus operandi when questioned is to take offence and sometimes apologise later, it’s also easy to believe that the group of people who are saying “Be cautious around Ben!” or “Be skeptical of what he’s saying!” are not out to smear him but are worried about his very public behaviour towards his critics.
This is a shame, because critiquing Rachinger’s claims is vital if the story is going to have legs. Such criticism should not be seen as negative. There is, unfortunately, a tendency by leakers and people involved in revealing malfeasance to believe that the evidence stands for itself. It does not; philosophers talk about this kind of problem with respect to the Duhem-Quine thesis, the idea that bits of information (the evidence) do not tell us which one interpretation, which would tie the information together, is the best. Rachinger’s evidence is tied into, and
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Think of it this way: Rachinger’s claims are extraordinary in two important senses.
1. They are claims that challenge our assumptions of how our civic society works, particularly the way in which our current government operates. 2. They are claims which are routinely pooh-poohed or dismissed by influential members of our society, and segments of the population think we have grounds to trust those influential members and thus distrust the kind of claims Rachinger is making.
Rachinger’s claims are extraordinary and by critiquing them we can either show them to be false, or the evidence – properly considered – provides for an alternative interpretation, or that his claims are true. Both Stoddart and Tiso, by critiquing Rachinger’s interpretation of the evidence, are aiming to work out which of those three options is the most likely. They are to be commended for doing this vital work because, at this stage, it is not work we are seeing be done by the traditional media. Which itself is an interesting question. At this particular point in time Rachinger has eleven posts up on Medium. However, there is precious little talk about his claims going on outside blogs and Twitter. So. what’s going on? Why might people be ignoring Rachinger’s revelations (if we put to one side the claim that there is an organised and conspiratorial smear campaign going on against him by both the Left and Right)?
Well, maybe it’s an example of what Lee Basham calls a “toxic truth”: Rachinger’s claims are the kind of thing you don’t report on or investigate because, although true, they are toxic and thus threaten your place, your standing and the very structure of the society in which
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 72 of 309 you think you live. A toxic truth in this case is evidence so extraordinary that you don’t want to acknowledge it because you: 1. Don’t want to reconsider the kind of society in which you live, and 2. You don’t want to piss off the people who pooh-pooh such truths. Say, for example, you are a journalist in Aotearoa and someone approaches you with clear and unequivocal evidence of wrongdoing? Who do you go for to comment? Well, obviously the Prime Minister, John Key, the joking version would go. Yet the reason why that joke might be funny (in the hands of a more skilled comedian) is a problem: we currently live in a media cycle where the PM is the go-to person for comment on any issue. The question then is, do you want to endanger that relationship, especially if the evidence of malfeasance adversely affects his office or person? Probably not, Basham would argue. And even if you, the good and honest journalist, decide to sally forth and publish that damning evidence, will your editor even allow you to go to print?
That hypothetical is just one example of what Basham’s terms a “toxic truth”. Since the #dirtypolitics fiasco of last year there has been a lot of talk about toxicity in the way our media covers political events and scandals (albeit not in these particular philosophical terms). So, maybe Rachinger’s allegations are being ignored because they are too toxic?
Another viable option is that they are being ignored because they merely tell us what we already know (or suspected): #dirtypolitics, on the part of Slater and Co., did not stop post the General Election last year, and we kind of already knew that (or, at the least, suspected it). Rachinger’s evidence supplements the case set out by Nicky Hager, but does not change the details. Those of us still outraged by #dirtypolitics want to know more, but for those already burnt out on the topic (or not that interested in it to begin with) it adds little new information.
The third option is that the evidence is just too technical for a lot of people. Words like “threema”, “TOR”, and the like turn off some readers
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(or so some claim). I’ve never been entirely convinced that this is true, but then again I am a technically-minded kind of person. Your mileage might vary.2 Whatever the case, at the moment what seems like it should be a story is turning out to be the kind of thing which is big on Twitter but not elsewhere (I say, aware that as soon as I publish this post, the situation will likely change and make me look like an idiot). Maybe its something about the story itself? Let us, then, take a look at the content (and inferences) of Rachinger’s allegations. Next time: The Israeli connection, who was working for whom, and the questions of motive and intent. Notes 1. My own experience with Rachinger is interesting in this regard. I have been following his work for a while (as one does when planning to write a book on local conspiracy theories) and someone pointed out to me that Rachinger’s list of followers looked to be inflated with bots. Of the approximately five and an half thousand followers he had at the beginning of the year, about four thousand of them were accounts which had only tweeted once and followed just one person, to whit Ben Rachinger. I followed this up and verified that, yes, my source was correct. When Rachinger decided to make a big issue out of his follower count being 95% genuine, I raised the problem with him. I was attacked for carrying out a smear on him. Oddly enough, at the same time he had a conversation with someone else where he admitted that those four thousand- ish accounts were, indeed, not genuine (but that he also hadn’t created them). 2. For example, a prominent blogger told me off for using the term “false dilemma” in an argument, claiming that it’s talk like that which makes the Left look out-of-touch to the ordinary voter. I laughed and laughed and laughed. http://all-embracing.episto.org/2015/05/04/the-b3nraching3r-allegations-part- one/
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Matthew Dentith: The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Two Written by Matthew Dentith on May 6th, 2015. Leave a comment Table of contents for The @B3nRaching3r Allegations 1. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part One 2. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Two The curious thing about the Ben Rachinger posts up on Medium is that if you followed #dirtypolitics, it doesn’t seem all that remarkable that Cameron Slater and Company are continuing to try to drive the politics of Aotearoa (New Zealand) towards the kind of thing we see in the American Primaries. They tried it with the Len Brown smear campaign and they tried — with more success — in the 2014 General Election.
Which is to say that Rachinger’s allegations fit into a pre-existing narrative. This doesn’t make them automatically true; the thing about pre-existing narratives is that they are easy to copy (and not that hard to subvert). However, the amount of evidence Rachinger has amassed in support of his claims certainly lends credence to the claim there is something to his story. Either that or this is a very elaborate distraction some weeks or months in preparation.
Which is not to say we should accept everything Rachinger says uncritically. However, before we do that, we really should talk about what happened two days ago.
The Lauda Finem Attack Depending on how closely you are following Rachinger’s Twitter feed you may or may not be aware of a quite incredible post about him over at the Lauda Finem blog. In short (and I’m not positing a link because I don’t think it would be ethical, for reasons which will become obvious), the “fine” people at Lauda Finem have produced what can only be described as a “character assassination” piece about Rachinger, claiming that the real conspiracy is not about Cam Slater and Company but, rather, the New Zealand Police Force using Rachinger to try and bring Lauda Finem down. Their evidence for this is a series of tweets from Rachinger, an inside and unnamed source
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The Lauda Finem blog is a curious beast. For a while now the rumour has been that they are a vassal blog of the Cameron Slater social media empire. Lauda Finem have denied this repeatedly, claiming that they are neither Left nor Right, and that their only agenda is exposing police and judicial corruption (along with revealing the pedosadists in power in our society). Yet, the attack piece on Rachinger is odd; if Lauda Finem really is independent of Slater and Company, the attack piece makes it look as if they are at least in talks with that set of ne’erdowells.
The piece is also an example of a dox; the “fine” people at Lauda Finem have revealed details of Rachinger’s schooling, the ages of his siblings (along with their names), what turns out to be a former address of his parents, and a number of other things of a personal nature. Some commentators might find this somewhat funny; after all, Rachinger has been accused of doxing others, so what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? We actually don’t need to take sides, however, because doxing is bad no matter the victim. Even if you think Rachinger doxes others, that does not justify the doxing of his family.
But that’s not all; the Lauda Finem post is long. Very long. That’s par for the course; most of their posts tend to be lengthy disquistitions. It’s quite possible that it was written in the matter of a few hours yesterday, like my post (if you don’t care about quality you can get a two thousand word post out in under an hour; call now to learn how!). However, the suspicious mind might look at it and ask “How long have they been sitting on that for?” Because it looks designer built to be a takedown of Rachinger, a failsafe blogpost deployed to nuke a discussion. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I couldn’t help but think “There’s more going on here than meets the eye.”
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Indeed, if the Lauda Finem post was designed to either stop Rachinger (by virtue of scaring him off) or stop debate about his revelations (by making us think the real conspiracy is at the level of the New Zealand Police Force), then it has failed. Whilst certain elements of the Left and Right seem to cite Lauda Finem posts approvingly (as seen in the comments on posts at, say, the Standard and Public Address), a lot of the reaction online has been outrage towards the doxing, and the voicing of suspicions that an attack post like that means Rachinger must be on to something. Certainly, if it was an attempt to shutdown the discussion, it’s failed. If it was merely an attempt to draw attention to their own particular conspiracy theory, well, that seems to have failed too.
Which, I might add, seems strange. Not to detract from Rachinger’s narrative, but as said previously, the claims he is making do not seem all that big and bold once we take into account the publication and veracity of “Dirty Politics”; his story supplements the #dirtypolitics conspiracy theory rather than subverts or replaces it. As such, I really don’t see what the point of the Lauda Finem post was, unless they either really do believe their own conspiracy theory that Rachinger is working for the Police against them, or they are afraid Rachinger has information which will damage them, and so they want the story shutdown. I suppose they might just be troublemakers who don’t like the attention being elsewhere, but whatever the case, it’s a strange move.
Slater the Fantasist Let me restate a hypothesis I discussed in my review of “Dirty Politics”: if Slater is a fantasist who inflates or even invents a large amount of his role and importance to politics in Aotearoa, then much of what Slater says about himself, his associates and his sources needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I accused Nicky Hager, in that review, of always taking literally whatever Slater claimed, when sometimes it seemed more likely that Slater – in his correspondence – was giving himself a starring role in the work of others. I think the same complaint can be laid at the feet of Rachinger; sometimes he
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Rachinger’s stance is understandable; it seemed for several years that the entirety of Aotearoa (New Zealand) took Slater to be very, very important. He was on TV, he was on the radio (I’m surprised he wasn’t a star in some local movie), despite the fact that many people questioned why we were treating a blogger with the deference of a spokesperson for the PM. Slater’s blog, despite a supposed huge audience share, was an echo chamber when it came to actual commenters; for many of us it seemed that the stories of Slater’s power were greater than his actual power.
One reading of “Dirty Politics” seemed to suggest that Slater was as powerful as he was made out to be. Another reading (admittedly my own, but shared by a few others) was that Slater and Company were bumbling fools, but fools with so many things on the go that sometimes they had what turned out to be remarkable successes. According to that reading, Slater used those scant successes to make himself look to be a big player in local politics, and because people thought he was a player, you got the spectacle of people like Stuart Nash and Chris Trotter (amongst many on the so-called “Left”) sometimes allying themselves with someone who was on the nasty end of the Nasty Right.
Which, I guess, is why I sometimes read some of the Rachinger material and go “That interpretation? Really?” Let me give you a choice example.
At the time “Dirty Politics” was released, Slater happened to be in Israel (some people claim that was a cover story, but let’s go with it for the sake of this example). Questions where asked, mostly along the lines of “Where you say?” and “Why? Rachinger asserts that Slater’s trip to Israel was “funded by Israel”. I assume he got that impression from Slater. Yet “Israelis” — the term being tossed abou here — is ambiguous. It could refer to the nationstate (or one of its
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Now, the Israeli thing is not a major part of Rachinger’s story, so why am I focussing on it? Well, it’s because if Rachinger believes this because Slater told him it’s the case, then we need to think carefully about which of the three definitions of “Israelis” we should be operating with. It would be easy to think that “Israelis” means “State of Israel”, but that would not be the obvious inference to draw. After all, if Slater likes to inflate his role in proceedings (which I think is a fair inference to make given the revelations of “Dirty Politics”), then its not clear that Israelis must refer to the State of Israel (or some part of it). If we assume he really was in Israel (as he claims), then we have grounds to think he associates with Israelis. However, assuming that his security advice comes from the State of Israel seems forced, especially if we think Slater is a fantasist (as I do). At best you might think that Slater has met Israeli officials and asked them “How you do encrypt your communications?” and then spun that as some privileged communication between himself and his “good friends” in the Government of Israel.
Update 1: Slater’s friends are in the Israeli Embassy in Wellington and he was paid (technically by the State of Israel) to go to Israel. So “Israeli” here does seem to be mean at least “Israeli officials”. You can read about his trip here. (Thanks,@jofromgreylynn Update 2: Here’s another article shedding light on Slater and the Israeli connection. This one goes a little more into the details of the funding of that trip last August; Slater claims he covered most of the costs. Frankly, this blurs things even further to some extent. Yes, Slater went to Israel by invitation of the Israeli Embassy (which is an invitation by the State of Israel), because, according to the Head of Mission, Slater is a “spiritual person” (insert sarcasm here) and thus it is not beyond the bounds of possibility he got security advice from Israeli officials whilst there. Then again, if you accept the fantasist argument, you can also imagine a
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 79 of 309 scenario where Slater claims his security advice comes from the Israelis because it makes him look more powerful and connected (rather than, say, talking to someone locally, or simply doing a search for “secure communications cellphone”). However, the fact he was in Israel and has communication with the Israeli Embassy at the very least means its reasonable to assume that when he says “Israelis” he’s referring to people from Israeli with some official capacity. As I said, this is really just a minor, passing remark in Rachinger’s narrative, but it’s the kind of thing you need to be aware of when appraising evidence. Being told that Slater’s use of Threema was due to a recommendation by the eponymous “Israelis” suggests at least three possibilities. This doesn’t speak against Rachinger’s narrative as so much as question how we interprets some of the evidence. Sometimes what looks to be clear evidence of something turns out not to be; the question is whether this is a systemic issue in the narrative? More on this in a subsequent post.
Next time: Matthew Hooton, the Young Nat connection and a question as to whether Ben Rachinger is the hero, or just another villain in his own story. http://all-embracing.episto.org/2015/05/06/the-b3nraching3r-allegations-part- two/
Matthew Dentith: The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Three
Written by Matthew Dentith on May 11th, 2015. Leave a comment Table of contents for The @B3nRaching3r Allegations 1. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part One 2. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Two 3. The @B3nRaching3r Allegations – Part Three 4. Episode 49 – The @B3nRaching3r Allegations Lauda Finem Redux A quick update on the Lauda Finem issue; apparently one “Matthew Denteth” is causing them trouble, and they have evidence of him doing
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 80 of 309 something shady in Hamilton. This “Matthew Denteth” they keep banging on about seems to look exactly like me, but has a last name that is almost-but-not-quite my own. You would almost think – given how consistently they misspell my name – that they had been told about me over the phone (or in person) and then told to write a blogpost about me. Certainly, if they had actually been reading my blog and researching me (as they claim), you would think they would be able spell my last name. Then again, they also call Keith Ng “David”; Lauda Finem’s research credentials are just a little suspect, aren’t they?1 The Matthew Hooton Connection Let me put on my overt political hat for a minute and say that I think Matthew Hooton is a despicable character who makes great issue out of how moral and open he is, whilst at the same time happily supplying Nicky Hager’s address to Cathy Odgers (so she can pass that on to disgruntled clients to enact vengeance). My personal opinion is that Hooton is a terrible person with no real moral centre, other than a self- aggrandising belief that he is basically a decent guy.
I put this hat on because, like many people on the Left who read “Dirty Politics”, I thought Hooton came across as a nefarious co-conspirator in Cameron Slater’s #dirtypolitics campaign. Yet Hooton has stage managed his role so well that he’s still a political commentator of some note. As such, when Ben Rachinger had a post about Hooton I thought “Oh goody!” As did Rachinger; , since in this installment he claims that he has proof Hooton lied about knowing what Rachinger and Slater were up to with regards to hacking blogs. Except that, on careful reading, the evidence does not say that at all. My “Oh goody!” moment became a “Oh noes…” instead. It all starts with an email from Matthew Hooton to David Farrar, the primary author of KiwiBlog (the blog which epitomises the adage “Don’t read the comments!”). Hooton who had been searching The Standard, a Labour-aligned blog which you probably also shouldn’t read the comments of (for example, you’ll find a fair number of approving references to Lauda Finem there) and realised that the Standard’s search system was picking up on internal (and thus not public) discussions between moderators. Farrah then asked if these discussions
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 81 of 309 could be extracted from the Standard without hacking (i.e. if they could be found legitimately). After all, what treasures which would benefit the Right might be unearthed by such an action? Farrar’s response to Hooton was cc-ed to Slater, and Slater forwarded that email to Rachinger. Forwarded is the word we need to focus on here, because Rachinger seems to use this forwarded email as evidence that Hooton knew about Rachinger’s hacking assiciation with Cameron Slater. As he claims about Hooton: Why send this email to a hacker? Why deny the emails existence and then defame ruthlessly the ‘hacker’? Was Mr Hooton lying when he said he didn’t know anything about me?
Well, I would day in response, it’s presumably because – unless Rachinger has further emails sent to him by Hooton – the e-mail he uses as evidence Hooton knew about him was forwarded by Slater, not sent by Hooton. As we know – and surely Rachinger knows as well – if someone forwards an email to you, there is no reason to think that the original emailer has any idea their email has been passed on. As such, there’s no reason – given the provided evidence – to think that Hooton subsequently lied when he said he knew nothing about Rachinger. Rachinger knew about Hooton because Hooton and Farrar’s correspondence was forward to him by Slater, not because Hooton or Farrar cc-ed him into said correspondence.
As to why the email was forwarded to Rachinger… Well, presumably it was because Slater wanted access to those internal communications and was ignoring Farrar’s request that this information should be extracted legallyrather than via some hack.2 As such, given that Farrar, at the very least, was saying “No hacking!”, it would make sense for Slater to forward that email along and not notify Farrar (and presumably Hooton) that he was asking a hacker how they might (illegitimately) get to such a dataset. Unless Rachinger has further email correspondence that shows that Hooton was aware of his work with Slater, then it does not seem we have grounds to think Hooton is lying about knowing Rachinger’s role in the conspiracy. So, whilst I – with my political hat back on – would
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Who or what is Ben Rachinger, anyway? I am not fond of ad hominem attacks, particularly when it comes to talk of conspiracy theorists. However, there is a class of legitimate ad hominem, the class which call into question the ability for someone to be the right kind of witness. For example, it is inappropriate to say that because someone wears corduroy trousers, then they cannot contribute to a debate on economic policies. However, if someone turns out to have bad night vision, it is appropriate to call into question their ability to accurately report what they saw on some dark and stormy night. Arguments cannot be dismissed via an ad hominem, but testimony can.
I bring this up because some people are wary of Rachinger’s testimony about his exploits with Slater because Rachinger was a member of the Young Nats.
The Young Nats, for those of you unaware of such abstract entities, is – like Young Labour – a group of young people who have decided to support one of the major political parties here in Aotearoa (New Zealand), to whit the National Party. It’s like the entryway drug to becoming a politician, and most of us outside the two major parties in Aotearoa (New Zealand) look at the members of the Young Nats and Young Labourwith a mixture of suspicion and derision. So, the fact Rachinger was an admitted Young Nat and he worked with Slater makes some think that his story must be some ruse, or play, by the Whaleoil (National Party-aligned) social media machine, a distraction from some other terrible happenstance. Others think that we have grounds to suspect Rachinger’s story because Rachinger was an ally of Slater and the National Party who at some point got burnt by Slater, and thus is getting his revenge on Slater and, by extension, National.
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Both versions of this story are arguments to the extent that we can ignore or dismiss Rachinger’s claims because his narrative is disinformation emanating from Slater’s camp, or from an ally-turned- enemy of Slater. There may well be something to this, because Rachinger’s narrative is a little opaque at times. Whilst Rachinger presents himself as the hero of his story – a tale of a bold hacker who decided to infiltrate the Whaleoil social media empire and find out its secrets – the evidence he presents also fits with a rival narrative, in which he happily worked for Slater until such time Slater’s corrosive company pushed him away.
For example, Rachinger appears to agree to hack the Standard (although he claims he did not actually perform such a hack) and, as evidence, he presents bank records which indicate Slater gave him a down payment for said hack. This means we have to ask whether Rachinger: 1. Attempted the hack and failed (thus accruing the wrath of Slater), 2. Succeeded in the hack but then found that Slater was unwilling to pay him more (something Rachinger presumably could not publicly admit to), or 3. Whether he really was a double-agent, working against Slater and seeing what it was Slater would be stupid enough to ask him to do? Herein lies the issue: in his various posts Rachinger has has told stories about going to the police (and claiming they wanted to use him as part of a fishing expedition for information), seeking work from Slater’s associate Tony Lentino (and a blackhat hacker), and agreeing to hack the Standard. It’s a confusing tale, where you really aren’t sure whether he’s a noble hacker who decided to go undercover or just another of the villains in the “Dirty Politics” scandal, albeit one who ended up on the wrong side of Cameron Slater. All we have is his word, or more precisely, his version and interpretation of those events. He wants us to believe the noble hacker hypothesis is the best interpretation of the story, but he would, wouldn’t he? The fact is that if we believe he was undercover the entire time, then we are relying on the word of a good
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This is not me saying “Don’t trust the words of Ben Rachinger!” Rather, I am simply saying there is something to the idea that the way he tells his story opens him up to accusations that what we are getting is his interpretation of events, wherein he is the noble hero, rather than a totally honest accounting of what really happened. It seems clear that Rachinger witnessed (and maybe was complicit) in a variety of Slater’s #dirtypolitic activities. As such, Rachinger’s narrative fits in with Hager’s exposé of Slater and Company. What isn’t clear is Rachinger’s motivations. None of this detracts from the information released by Rachinger; it just raises interesting questions about what we might not be being told.
Notes 1. As for what I might have done in Hamilton; attended a conference, taught at Waikato and given a eulogy. Dreadful dealings the lot of them. 2. After all, if it turned out you could access the information on the Standard via a simple search or by accessing a unlinked but public page, then the fault would be on the hosts of the Standard for not securing their communications. However, if the information could only be accessed via a hack, then accessing that information would require criminal activity. http://all-embracing.episto.org/2015/05/11/the-b3nraching3r-allegations-part- three/
Pete George: Rachinger tweeting again
Ben Rachinger has resumed drip feeding his revelations – after complaining about the media ignoring him.
Ben Rachinger @B3nRaching3r
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I’ll finish the story myself once I wind down today. They can’t hit me with defamation judgements. Because I’m right Hahahahahahahahaha.
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Here’s what accessing Threema from my phone is like (Part ?)
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Part Two.
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So once past that evidential proof stage, let’s examine the messages contained within. Just remember, “no proof”.
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Was Slater getting a cut?
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The Prime Minister of this country calls someone who speaks to Organised Crime, hires hacks and is clearly untouchable even when “bankrupt”. A list and summary of most of the Rachinger Posts http://yournz.org/2015/05/05/rachinger-tweeting-again/
Pete George: Talking of explaining… ,,,what the heck is this post about: Sphinx and Rachinger
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I mean, it’s about Lynn Prentice explaining how expert he is at programming except for when he leaves vulnerabilities, and explaining how anyone who criticises him is a pathetic dipstick, like:
Youall understand that fix? Well I am sure that most won’t. And I’d quite sure that most of the pathetic dipsticks who donated me the title “worlds greatest sysop” (and who keep wanking on it at every available opportunity) are definitely too illiterate and thick to do so.
But surely there are the odd right winger who has enough brains (Barnsley Bill?) could explain it to them. I’d advise them to use simple words and punctuate with grunting at frequent intervals.
But what’s his real point? While Rachinger is headlined he isn’t mentioned at all in the post.
It’s as if Prentice is trying to attract Rachinger and impress him with his technical knowledge – sort of hacker mateship.
Or he’s explaining in advance of some potentially embarrassing revelation.
Or something. Whatever it is he seems to have gone to a bit of effort.
Intentional or not it should explain one thing to Rachinger – beware of getting too close to bloggers on the left as well as bloggers on the right. http://yournz.org/2015/05/04/talking-of-explaining/
Pete George: Lauda Finem versus The Standard
Amongst Lauda Finem’s fairly brutal attack on Ben Rachinger’s drip fed revelations they address claims made about them by Lynn Prentice and Greg Presland at The Standard
There have been accusations they are working for Cameron Slater at The Standard and also on Twitter:
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@conspiracism: Whatever Lauda Finem’s game, it supports the longstanding hypothesis that they really are a vassal blog of Slater’s #rtpt A general denial.
We will however say this much. At no point have LF ever had any contact with Cameron Slater. We have defended the man over the defamation tort brought by Matthew John Blomfield, that fact is very much on public record and worth noting at this point as it does have a relationship with the events currently unfolding. LF has no political agenda, we are neither of the left in politics, nor the right. We have been highly critical of both and are subsequently despised by political parties of left and right factions. We certainly do not support a political party in New Zealand. We are primarily an anti corruption group with a focus on New Zealand, in that regards we do not support Cameron Slater, nor do we an anyway endorse his political view’s.
And directed at The Standard:
Of course the idiots at the Standard are now, true to form, attempting to spin their own warped perspective, anything it takes to hit Slater?
The attempts that are now unfolding to paint a different picture are in our opinion little more than a diversion, or as the the Standard put it themselves a few days ago, “Smoke and Mirrors”. Funnilly enough both Lynn Prentice and Greg Presland seem now to be leading the charge, smoke machines in hand.
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From team LF’s perspective Rachinger’s adjoining Slater and “all the PM’s men” to what we believe was a very simple conspiracy is little more than an elaborate smoke screen, a hoax designed to take the New Zealand publics eye of the ball that is actually in play. Rachinger has alleged that he was engaged by the New Zealand police to aid with the investigation of the now infamous “RawShark” hack of Cameron Slater’s website and various online accounts including Facebook. LF believes that this claim is misleading in the extreme for a number of very good reasons. Whilst we don’t intend focusing on the current fixation that is deliberately being promoted around Cameron Slater we will briefly touch on a couple of important facts.
Curiously they then proceed to make claims about very specific evidence of contact between Rachinger and Slater, presumably not obtained from Rachinger.
More on The Standard:
In fact the New Zealand Herald and Lynn Prentice’s blog the Standard (below) reported and revelled in those false allegations around the same time as Rachinger’s tweet to LF on the 10 April 2015. Blogger on breaching name suppression charges gets name suppression
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Written By: MICKYSAVAGE – Date published: 11:54 am, April 10th, 2015 You may have to read the headline twice. And whoever he is should hand in his blogger’s union card. From the Herald: A blogger accused of breaching a high-profile name suppression has been granted name suppression himself. The 51-year-old appeared in Auckland District Court today facing two charges of contravening suppression orders made by Justice Helen Winkelmann – the former chief High Court judge, newly appointed to the Court of Appeal. The Auckland-based blogger, who writes about corruption in New Zealand, is also charged with five counts of criminal harassment. The complainants include a politician, civil servants, a real estate agent and the former partner of an Auckland businessman – all of whom feature prominently on his website. It is alleged that both in August and December last year, the defendant named and posted photographs of two teens involved in a high-profile attack that left another teenager dead. Their names and images, which were specifically suppressed by Justice Winkelmann at sentencing in the High Court at Auckland, are still up on the blog. This person is in major risk of the Streisand effect kicking in. Please note suppression orders are in place. There should be no Speculation on who this blogger is although it took me about five seconds to work out who he is. Source: http://thestandard.org.nz/blogger-on-breaching-name-suppression- charges-gets-name-suppression/ The New Zealand Herald’s article seems to have been pulled from the papers website.
MICKYSAVAGE is a pseudonym used by Greg Presland.
And:
Sure Rachinger and his employers can create a little noise on twitter but at the end of the day absolutely everything that Rachinger has done is fully discoverable (the NZ police now being legally obliged to disclose absolutely everything to the defence) by the person who has been falsely accused. There is of course a simple explanation for the New Zealand Herald not running the article the standard gloated about, the information they had likely been given by Rachinger never checked out, that and their lawyers had already been put on notice. There is also a reason why the Standard haven’t really wanted to touch the
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So far there’s been a muted response from Prentice:
Interesting and amusing. I guess that they are starting to get worried.
Once you get past the bullshit that our con artists of Onehunga and Mt Roskill like to draw over themselves, the following things stand out.
1. The police are investigating them for breaching suppression orders. I have news for them. Holding their servers offshore doesn’t mean anything in legal terms, especially when it gets in front of a judge irate about direct breaches of a suppression orders..
2. They don’t understand the powers that interpol has, nor the levels of cooperation that police forces routinely extend to each other. and
Well nothing else of significance really. The rest of it winds up as Raymond being his usual silly self…
Another farcical denial that Cameron Slater doesn’t write posts for them. His hamfisted style is pretty distinctive. And it is something that is has been in front of a court already and by the sounds of it will probably feature in a civil case eventually heading their way.
I am so glad that our site doesn’t do any of these kinds of stupid games.
That’s quite ironic considering Prentice and Presland have just been playing silly games with name suppression – see Prentice ignores lawyer advice on suppression. Presland tends to shy away from awkward publicity but it would be normal for Prentice to attack back.
UPDATE: A Presland response Funny thing about that post is their claim the Herald had pulled its article about the silly blogger who broke name suppression but then sought name suppression. The article is still up (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11429608).
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Maybe the authors of LF find difficulty with clicking on links … http://yournz.org/2015/05/05/lauda-finem-versus-the-standard/
Lauda Finem: The Rachinger Identity – Espionage thriller or just another bad outbreak of Streisand effect? MAY 4, 2015 BY LAUDAFINEM 7 COMMENTS
Alastair Thompson and scoop.co.nz, victims of Rachinger’s “social engineering” or the “Streisand Effect”? Whatever the cause thousands more New Zealander’s now know what Mike Sabin is accused of. “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi
On April 21 2015 Lauda Finem received information that so- called cyber activist Benjamin Rachinger had been arrested by police around a month earlier, on or about the 18th March 2015. Rachinger had first come to the attention of Lauda Finem staffers in December 2014 when he had started following us on twitter. Over a very brief period Rachinger’s behaviour triggered a number of what we here at LF call “red flag’s” and so he subsequently became a candidate for observation and profiling, we propose to explain this in a little more detail a little later for readers unfamiliar with LF’s psychological profiling and online strategies. The information LF received was simple enough and it was supported by another news source, funnily enough also confirmed earlier by Rachinger, before he executed his sudden U- Turn:
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Team LF were not specific about the date of Rachinger’s alleged arrest for a very good reason, that reason being directly connected to LF’s ongoing investigation of Rachinger himself and his online activities, our reasons will become clear later in the post Without being aware of it Benjamin Stephen Rachinger had in fact become the target of a Lauda Finem operation in December 2014 and it had nothing whatsoever to do with Rawshark or Slater. During the execution of that investigation LF had managed to build up a comprehensive profile and had concluded that Rachinger and more importantly his new associates and online antics were of serious concern, they needed to be monitored carefully. So who is Benjamin Stephen Rachinger? Rachinger now aged 27, grew up in the New Zealand seaside community of Tauranga (Mt Maunganui), as a child he attended Mt Maunganui Primary school and a variety of High schools. In his teens Rachinger moved to Auckland where he appears to have lived with his mother Noeline, his sister Jaimee (8 years his junior) and what seems to have been his mothers second partner.
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Rachinger’s parents marriage may have collapsed at some point earlier with Rachinger”s father remaining in Tauranga. This information was retrieved from public record, again with documents freely available online, some retrieved from the New Zealand companies office where Benjiman Stephen Rachinger and Noeline Evelyn Rachinger are both listed as directors and share holders of various corporate entities, both also registered as residing at the same address, 92 Paritai Drive, Orakei – a high-end harbour-side inner Auckland suburb.
Noelene Rachinger skipped New Zealand with her partner Alan Blackwell back in 2007 -2008 when the companies she and Blackwell had traded (listed above) collapsed, in the process leaving substantial debts owing to creditors, at least one of which was an ex employee. Whilst this was not widely reported at the time, at least not in Auckland, the Otago Daily Time’s ran a small piece covering a legal proceeding, investigation and attempts to collect on a judgement against the pair, The attitude of Benjamin Rachinger’s guardian says a lot:
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Sacked woman gets $17,000 for unjustified dismissal Thu, 12 Mar 2009 A woman sacked three weeks into a job as a personal assistant has been awarded almost $17,000 for unfair dismissal. Yurinda van der Bel was fired by the now defunct Kids Art Space in August 2007 for not sending out a DVD on time and typing incorrect identifier codes onto letters sent to clients. Employment Relations Authority member Alastair Dumbleton, sitting in Auckland, found Kids Art Space had dismissed Ms van der Bel unfairly because it did not give her a three-month trial period. Kids Art Space was ordered to pay Ms van der Bel nearly $10,000 in lost wages and $7000 compensation for illness she suffered because of her sacking. The employer did not attend the authority’s investigation meeting. Director Alan Blackwell told the authority he and fellow director Noeline Rachinger had no intention of returning from the United States for the investigation. He said Kids Art Space had stopped trading and had no assets. Source: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/47161/sacked-woman-gets- 17000-unjustified-dismissal It would seem that Mr Blackwell very likely played a key role in staring the young Rachinger toward computer science, in particular coding of sorts. The Rachinger’s New Zealand Companies Office records show an association with a number of individuals, companies and trusts that make for very interesting reading. They are associations that need to be explored further by the affected individuals who are located in New Zealand: Benjamin Stephen RACHINGER, 92 Paritai Drive, Orakei, Auckland, 1071 , New Zealand Mohamed Nadir KHEIR, 6 Solstone Place, Flat Bush, Auckland, 2016 , New Zealand Thomas Paton SMITH, 42 Bruntwood Drive, Rd 2, Tauranga, 3172 , New Zealand Nicholas Allen MCCAW, 321 Creightons Road, Rd 2, Papakura, 2582 , New Zealand SV LIMITED c/o 262 Clevedon-kawakawa Road, Rd 5, Papakura, 2585 , New Zealand Paul Graeme GIBBARD, 262 Clevedon-kawakawa Road, Rd 5, Papakura, 2585 , New Zealand Allen John MCCAW, Milburn, Rd 2, Milton, 9230 , New Zealand Ismay Mary JOHNSTON, 321 Creightons Road, Rd 2, Papakura, 2582 , New Zealand DE MONCHY TRUSTEE SERVICES LIMITED, 262 Clevedon- kawakawa Road, Rd 5, Papakura, 2585 , New Zealand
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John Benjamin DE MONCHY, 1 Harper Street, Chatswood, Auckland, 0626 , New Zealand Carol Gerta DE MONCHY, 262 Clevedon-kawakawa Road, Rd 5, Papakura, 2585 , New Zealand Rachinger and Blackwell despite having skipped New Zealand for the United States in 2007-2008 now seem to be back in the land of the long black smoking gun, having only just last year entered their new “St Heliers” property in the Resene paints house of the year award, they actually managed to win house of the month: go with the flow Noelene Rachinger and Alan Blackman recently set about painting their entire St Heliers, Auckland home in a range of Resene colours. They drew inspiration from their bold furnishings and artwork, repeating splashes of red, in the bar stools and bedlinen, throughout the house. They kept the look classic in the downstairs living room and kitchen, painted in Resene ‘Rakaia’, echoed by the exterior of the home in Resene ‘Chicago’ and Resene ‘Half Alabaster’, creating seamless flow from inside to out. “We wanted to use colours that we loved and mix them with colours that would appeal to others,” says Noelene. Upstairs is where the fun begins, with the guest bedroom treated to lashings of Resene ‘Pirate’. “The bedroom is the first thing you see when you walk up the stairs and we wanted a wow-factor,” says Noelene. Source: http://www.resene.co.nz/competition/home-and- garden/pdf/14_Feb.pdf
Click to enlarge At the risk of again being labelled an “attack blog” by the trolls that are now roaming cyberspace, spinning fables and misinformation,
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 115 of 309 it seems to us that the need to grab the “wow factor” and of course with it the lime light seems to be a personality trait shared by the entire Rachinger family.
Rachinger at home in St Heliers Our assessment of Rachinger’s personality is unremarkable given what is now unfolding – that Rachinger is the product of a privileged background, albeit having met with some minor domestic turmoil along the way, as have many others far less privileged New Zealanders. As a result, on the available evidence, we suspect that Rachinger has an over developed sense of self-entitlement, is prone to pathological, often maladjusted, behaviour such as exaggeration with delusions of grandeur, he presents as an person who exhibits symptoms consistent withNPD, exhibiting a comorbidity with a number of other personality disorders (DSM-IV-TR) – all of which could well explain the behaviours that are now being acted out. Rachinger’s claimed midrange hearing loss is by far the least of his true disabilities.
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Third row fron front, third child from left, Benjiman Stephen Rachinger, the boy dreamed of being James Bond Of course LF’s profiling of Rachinger is far more extensive, all of which will in time be provided for others to investigate further – all of which we have little, if any, doubt will be used in legal proceedings in the very near future. Rachinger’s explanation The picture that Benjiman Rachinger is now painting for his cyber fan club, and of course the many political troll’s advancing his rhetoric, are to be found in the instalments below: The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part One) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Two) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Three) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Four) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Five) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Six) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Seven) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Eight) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Nine) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Ten) The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Eleven) K.I.S.S – Keep it simple stupid Team LF normally like to keep things simple, at least when the facts permit such simplicity. It is for this reason that we do not propose to say to much about the allegations Rachinger is levelling at Kiwi Blogger Cameron Slater. We will however say this much. At no point have LF ever had any contact with Cameron Slater. We
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 117 of 309 have defended the man over the defamation tort brought by Matthew John Blomfield, that fact is very much on public record and worth noting at this point as it does have a relationship with the events currently unfolding.
Has Cameron Slater falsely accused and used as a scapegoat in this another seriously corrupt police operation? LF has no political agenda, we are neither of the left in politics, nor the right. We have been highly critical of both and are subsequently despised by political parties of left and right factions. We certainly do not support a political party in New Zealand. We are primarily an anti corruption group with a focus on New Zealand, in that regards we do not support Cameron Slater, nor do we an anyway endorse his political view’s. Of course the idiots at the Standard are now, true to form, attempting to spin their own warped perspective, anything it takes to hit Slater?
Footnote – No member of the group collectively known as Lauda Finem have never meet Lynn Prentice, nor have we set foot in a New Zealand courtroom. Prentice’s repeated and deliberately false allegations will undoubtedly come back to haunt him some day soon. Source: http://thestandard.org.nz/rachinger-on-dirty-politics-2/#comment-1009225
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The attempts that are now unfolding to paint a different picture are in our opinion little more than a diversion, or as the the Standard put it themselves a few days ago, “Smoke and Mirrors”. Funnilly enough both Lynn Prentice and Greg Presland seem now to be leading the charge, smoke machines in hand.
Source: http://thestandard.org.nz/rachinger-on-dirty-politics- 2/?replytocom=1009214#respond From team LF’s perspective Rachinger’s adjoining Slater and “all the PM’s men” to what we believe was a very simple conspiracy is little more than an elaborate smoke screen, a hoax designed to take the New Zealand publics eye of the ball that is actually in play. Rachinger has alleged that he was engaged by the New Zealand police to aid with the investigation of the now infamous “RawShark” hack of Cameron Slater’s website and various online accounts including Facebook. LF believes that this claim is misleading in the extreme for a number of very good reasons. Whilst we don’t intend focusing on the current fixation that is deliberately being promoted around Cameron Slater we will briefly touch on a couple of important facts.
From left, Lynn Prentice and Greg Presland, two Labour party farts helping to give Kiwi politics a filthy name. LF has managed to establish with certainty that Benjamin Rachinger first contacted Cameron Slater on the 3rd of
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December 2013 viaGoogle+, before the Rawshark hack. We know this because we simply had someone ask the question and then requested the evidence, which was later supplied. We also now know that Rachinger did not contact Slater again until the 25th June 2014, some six months later andafter the Rawshark hack, that contact made via email. It must be pointed out at this point that Slater was then, and remains, of the view that Rachinger had played an active role in the so-called“RawShark” hack. We here at Lauda Finem however have no opinion either way, simply because we have not investigated the matter ourselves, nor do we intend to – our only interest in Mr Slater to date having been the aforementioned Blomfield matter, where we firmly stand in support of all journalists sources and whistle-blowers right to anonymity. Slater was again contacted by Rachinger on the 13th August 2014, that contact also made via email with request from Rachinger suggestive of a collaboration with Slater.
So far it seems to us that Rachinger has not provided one piece of evidence enough to implicate Slater in any wrong-doing. What he
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 120 of 309 has provided could in fact quite easily be explained when seen in another light. Of course many in New Zealand have a seriously bad habit of rushing to judgement, more often than not using limited facts filtered through their own prejudices. LF suspects that readers can discount episodes one – ten of Rachinger’s story, in fact they may as well be thrown in the garbage, where all bad fiction belongs. The real story of Rachinger’s cyber adventures begins with installment number eleven, at paragraph eleven. Rachinger opines: I did not and have not done the hacking of ‘The Standard’. Upon the date of Parliament opening and the hack not having been completed, which had caused Slater’s funder to have flown up to Auckland and leave empty- handed, Slater began to get very upset about not having the hacked information. I had been keeping substantial records of interactions between all parties as a matter of diligence. The NZ Police asked me to come into the Manakau Police Station and make a recorded statement about the alleged conspiracy to hack ‘The Standard’. I consented to doing this interview on my own and without a lawyer present. This interview took place over 2 hours with a few 5 minute breaks. I was asked repeatedly if I had done the hack, about my computing/network security skills and what had lead me to be in contact with Mr Slater. I was sure to tell the Police that Slater had, in messages, talked about owning multiple firearms, meeting organized crime gang members regularly and had powerful backers/funders. The decision to go to the Police and make a statement was prompted by my awareness I was in ‘Deep’ with very dangerous and angry people. The Police took my devices, with my consent, for cloning. My devices, Smartphone/Tablet/Laptop were sent to the Dunedin Electronic Crime Laboratory for cloning. This process took a month. I then had my devices returned to me by the Detectives and asked additional questions about the evidence. I have heard from the Police subsequently and it is my understanding the Police are very keen to interview Mr Slater about the evidence I have provided them. I have faith that the Police are free of political pressure and interference and are processing my evidence. This is complicated by the swirling rumours that I am ‘Rawshark’. This has been pushed by the attack blog “Lauda Finem”.
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Link to the LF article here- http://laudafinem.com/2015/04/21/whale-oil-hack-dirty-politics-new- zealand-police-arrest-cyber-activist-with-strong-labour-party- connections/ I have not been arrested by the Police. I have been receiving death threats and have had family members called and have had them threatened. I can only hope that justice and a free press still prevails in New Zealand. Source: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms- men-part-eleven-2f3322a0b22a Of course Rachinger could not have known that his cover had been blown back in December 2014 when an LF member red- flagged a number of his unsolicited tweets. Rachinger himself only realised that his cover had been blown on March 10 when he tweeted Lauda Finem. Now this is where dates and chronologies are critical. In fact Rachinger in his accounts is rather loose with his chronology and for very good reason – he does not want to put to much on the public record. Rachinger was never a New Zealand police operative as he has claimed. Lauda Finem knows the identity of the people behind the operation, Rachinger’s employers so to speak. Team LF are also aware that Rachinger has undoubtedly sworn a false police statement, a statement that led to the making of a series of false allegations which the police who were involved in the plan then quite happily used to issue false criminal informations.
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In fact the New Zealand Herald and Lynn Prentice’s blog the Standard (below) reported and revelled in those false allegations around the same time as Rachinger’s tweet to LF on the 10 April 2015. Blogger on breaching name suppression charges gets name suppression Written By: MICKYSAVAGE – Date published: 11:54 am, April 10th, 2015 You may have to read the headline twice. And whoever he is should hand in his blogger’s union card. From the Herald: A blogger accused of breaching a high-profile name suppression has been granted name suppression himself. The 51-year-old appeared in Auckland District Court today facing two charges of contravening suppression orders made by Justice Helen Winkelmann – the former chief High Court judge, newly appointed to the Court of Appeal. The Auckland-based blogger, who writes about corruption in New Zealand, is also charged with five counts of criminal harassment. The complainants include a politician, civil servants, a real estate agent and the former partner of an Auckland businessman – all of whom feature prominently on his website. It is alleged that both in August and December last year, the defendant named and posted photographs of two teens involved in a high-profile attack that left another teenager dead. Their names and images, which were specifically suppressed by Justice Winkelmann at sentencing in the High Court at Auckland, are still up on the blog. This person is in major risk of the Streisand effect kicking in. Please note suppression orders are in place. There should be no Speculation on who this blogger is although it took me about five seconds to work out who he is. Source: http://thestandard.org.nz/blogger-on-breaching-name- suppression-charges-gets-name-suppression/ The New Zealand Herald’s article seems to have been pulled from the papers website. Rachinger has in fact very likely made a false statement that has almost certainly enabled the New Zealand police to knowingly make additional false statements and declarations before both New Zealand courts and United States law enforcement authorities, designed specifically to corruptly facilitate the release of Lauda Finem’s private records. The only problem for Rachinger and his co-conspirators is that the information, if obtained, will do absolutely nothing to assist the New Zealand police’s false prosecution. This in turn will undoubtedly lead to civil action against the New Zealand police, the newspapers and blogs which printed material defamatory in nature
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 123 of 309 and of course the group who employed Rachinger. Lauda Finem will be naming those we suspect were responsible later in this post Of course Rachinger and his co-conspirator’s are now busy trying to manufacture a cyber free-for-all, one that they no doubt sincerely hope will muddy the waters a little – assisting with their attempts to now bury the evidence, a chance to rewrite history so to speak. “Social engineering is my real core skill. It’s what I use twitter for” – Benjamin Stephen Rachinger Unfortunately for the cabal that option was never really available, all because young Master Benjamin Rachinger had been far to enthusiastic, cock-sure in fact, with his “social engineering” skill set (see NPD). But it’s not all Rachinger’s fault. The New Zealand police and the others that were a party to the conspiracy had acted on little more than an incorrect hunch, again based on little more than internet myth, all a huge gamble that has now gone seriously WRONG. If LF is correct we suspect that Rachinger will likely now again put those “twitter social engineering skills” to good use, going hammer and tongs to further muddie the waters. Sure Rachinger and his employers can create a little noise on twitter but at the end of the day absolutely everything that Rachinger has done is fully discoverable (the NZ police now being legally obliged to disclose absolutely everything to the defence) by the person who has been falsely accused. There is of course a simple explanation for the New Zealand Herald not running the article the standard gloated about, the information they had likely been given by Rachinger never checked out, that and their lawyers had already been put on notice. There is also a reason why the Standard haven’t really wanted to touch the story either, again it was just too risky. In the Standards case LF suspects there decision not to publish Rachinger may have been to little to late The Rachinger scam Last year Lauda Finem posted a story wherein we named two young rugby players who had we believe be allowed to walk away from a murder charge because of a corrupt police investigation. The New Zealand police did not like what we had exposed so they did there best to shut Lauda Finem down. Their efforts included formal police documents which fell into Lauda Finem’s hands, as things tend to. Prior to that however a number of people who have featured in Lauda Finem stories falsified documents and made various police
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 124 of 309 complaints, again designed to have Lauda Finem pulled down. Again they were unsuccessful, but on that occasion those involved were caught red-handed in the conspiracy. Team LF are aware that there are plans to charge at least two of the conspirator’s with criminal offences. Team LF believes that these same groups, including disgraced ex- cops and serving New Zealand police officers from the Manukau Counties police district and West Auckland districts were the individuals behind Benjamin Rachinger’s role as a so-called police operative. So to recap on the important issues. The New Zealand police had failed to obtain the identities of Team LF, despite attempting to convince the US authorities that the owners had committed a crime under New Zealand law. The reason they failed is that Lauda Finem is not published from New Zealand as they had only surmised and thus falsely alleged, it was and is published from both Australia and the Netherlands. The New Zealand Police’s first failed unlawful attempt was executed on or about September 25 2014 (see exhibit below).
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Click to enlarge The earlier attempt by Matthew John Blomfield, Daniel Toresen, his bent ex-cop father, Dan Thompson and employee Mike Gilliam was attempted on or about December 13, 2013, LF publically
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 126 of 309 exposing the plot on July 18 2014, when again documents fell into our hands (see exhibit below).
Click to enlarge (identifying information redacted) Then in December 2014 LF exposed National Party MP Mike Sabin and john Key for concealing the fact that Sabin had been investigated and charged with serious sexual offending, a corruption story we continue to report on. The fact is that no laws had been broken in New Zealand, in fact LF had broken no laws anywhere and that was an insurmountable hurdle for the New Zealand police and others who desperately wanted LF closed down. Of course we here at LF were well aware that there would be other attempts by the various player we have named as corrupt over the years, the New Zealand police we’re top on that list. We also suspected that the New Zealand Police and the ex-cops, Thompson, Toresen and Gillam may join forces.
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Thompson & Toresen employee Mike Gillam was top on our watch list as he has quite the history when it comes to “social engineering”, in fact Gillam, in our estimation, fits a very similar profile to Rachinger, which is not surprising given that they are similar ages, likely knew each other having been raised in the same area in Tauranga and having both attended Tauranga’s Bethlehem College, very likely at around the same time. Kiwi’s close shave in $240m global scam 5:30 AM Saturday Feb 15, 2014 The company director hired private investigation firm Thompson & Toresen to research the proposed deal. The investigators warned him that their inquiries confirmed the deal was a scam and to cease all contact immediately. Despite the warning, the businessman thought the risk was worthwhile and decided to travel to the Netherlands. However, he was persuaded to take Mike Gillam, a senior Thompson & Toresen investigator, as security. While waiting to meet Kennedy in Amsterdam, Mr Gillam finally managed to persuade him the deal was a scam and to make a complaint to Dutch police. Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&ob jectid=11202526 In short the only way that the New Zealand police were going to be able to legally gain access to Lauda Finem’s records was if they could manufacture a specific crime that crossed international jurisdiction, or alleged that a crime had been committed, again preferably one that transcended international jurisdictions. That’s where an idiot was required, and where one does comes into frame. Neither the New Zealand police nor the clowns from
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Thompson and Toresen would risk being directly connected to the scam, it was illegal, so they needed a complete patsy, someone who they could throw under a passing bus if the plan turned to shit. Someone that was very easily manipulated……..enter Benjamin Stephen Rachinger.
Two tits and a thug, the team LF suspect were the architects behind Benjamin Rachinger’s Jason Bourne fantasy, ex cops Dan Thompson, his extremely bent son Danial Toresen and Ben’s police minder. There was never a police handler involved as Rachinger has claimed, Rachinger may not have been fully aware of the plan but he was certainly a party to it. He may in fact have been conned into believing that his contact was a police handler, who knows it could well have been Mike Gillam who played the role for Rachinger’s benefit….but it was very unlikely to have been a genuine police officer? The police would have been required to speak up before now and Rachinger would not be attempting to explain away his participation. The plan was simple, all it called for was for Rachinger to befriend who they incorrectly believed was the one individual behind the Lauda Finem website using twitter, – that was their first mistake. The second stage involved attempting to establish a trigger. The third stage then called for a corrupt police speciality, it’s more often than not called “entrapment”, causing the target to unwittingly commit a criminal offence. Now their plan might just have worked given certain conditions First had LF actually been just one person, that person being legally ignorant or a complete fuckwit. Second, had Rachinger been anyone other than Rachinger! But in the end. it still would not have given the idiots the result they had expected and in fact needed.
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So here’s how Benjamin Rachinger attempted to corruptly entrap Lauda Finem’s members using his oh so cool “social engineering” skills and the twitter sphere. Below are a selection of Rachinger’s tweets received during the period December 2014 – April 2015. We are pretty sure that the legally trained eye’s amongst LF’s readers will immediately spot what Benjamin Rachinger and his so-called police handlers had in mind, had LF volunteers responded as they’d hoped;
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Of course this trap was not the product of Rachinger’s own imagination, he has no legal skill, despite advertising otherwise. Rachinger had just tweeted what he’d been instructed to, but
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 140 of 309 that unfortunately does not make him any less culpable, in the criminal sense. Ben and his friends had relied on the notion that they managed to slip in unnoticed. Rather than slippinh in under the radar the idiots had set of every alarm in the building , so unfortunately for Rachinger and of course his criminal mates the plan was a flop.
Now this is important. The offending tweet, the tweet that had undoubtedly been intended to be used by Ratchinger’s so- called police “handler” to ease the laying of a “conspiracy” allegation, was retweeted ad nauseam by Rachinger, using various false identities, between December 2014 and February 2015, again a digital trail of intent.
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Readers should also note the temporary alterations Rachinger variously made to his Avatar and account name, all of course providing more evidence of intent. In fact on one occasion Rachinger thought to borrow the online identity of an
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Austrian national @burn3r, which of course may have been a grave mistake.
The LF team had very early on also drawn the conclusion that the various other twitter addresses, @rsinful @GeorgieBC @AbusedNZ and @Oatcake1967 were likely twitter accounts held by Rachinger himself or by one or more of his accomplices. It is unlikely that they would have run the risk of involving other twitter users. Rachinger’s angry little tweet fest in April was truly extraordinary. The degree of vitriol was probably most palpable when Rachinger could no longer contain his anger, clearly knowing the he was about to be exposed by LF. That rage caused Rachinger to again make a foolish and thoughtless decision, he posted evidence of his true agenda, that being to assist the New Zealand police corrupt ex-cops and National party factional warlords in shutting down LF’s expose on the problem the National party has with protecting pedophiles. in the lead up to his attempted entrapment of LF, Rachinger didn’t spend quite enough time however manufacturing his anti pedophile online persona, what ever it was he thought he had achieved, he was far from convincing in the role.
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In fact so unconvincing was his effort that at one point LF had concerns that Rachinger himself may have been a pedophile, what other reason could he have had for attempting to assist Mike Sabin? Looking back Rachinger and his masters also undoubtedly knew that there were other National party paedophiles yet to come out of the woodwork. Whether or not Rachinger is an active pedophile is now under investigation.
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Of course Rachinger is now very busy spinning a yarn, albeit with a somewhat limited reach, the twitter sphere and of course medium.com – the publicity Rachinger’s masters had hoped for tragically had derailed when mainstream journo’s backed away, undoubtedly warned by their legal advisors. What we here at LF are now going to be extremely interested in knowing is just how well Rachinger handles the stress of being in a court dock, whether the arrogance he is now exhibiting holds up during his own trial. Until then however the spin will no doubt continue:
All the twitter spin in the world won’t save Mr Rachinger from the legal tidal wave thats likely about to engulf him
The fact that Rachinger actually gloated about his social media prowess was a major mistake, it’s an error that he may soon live to regret, as we suspect he will now also be prosecuted for his part in the plan, not necessarily by the police of course. Rachinger in his last tweet to LF seems extremely confident, addressed to Slater as well – “see yah soon ;-)” Is this just
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 147 of 309 more youthful arrogance, or yet another example of Rachinger’s deluded self-belief, or perhaps the notion that he will be looked after by those who employed him. Or does the idiot seriously believe that the person he has aided police in falsely accusing is really LF? Or does he believe that the falsely accused will somehow forgive and forget, once the spurious charges are thrown out? In point of fact it’s not Lauda Finem that Mr Rachinger should now fear, it’s the falsely accused and of course Rachinger’s own impending criminal prosecution. We’ll have more on Mr Rachinger’s adventures in cyber space once we have received a little additional material collected by LF’s Australian members. Rachinger is now navigating in unchartered waters, lets see how long it takes the cunt to run aground! The victims of Pedophiles, child abusers and corruption can rest easy, sure in the knowledge that team Lauda Finem is not about to go anywhere. http://laudafinem.com/2015/05/04/the-rachinger-identity-espionage-thriller-or- just-another-bad-outbreak-of-the-streisand-effect/
Redbaiter: Rachinger’s rat’s nest- dirty politics meme gets new lease of life
BY REDBAITER ON MAY 4, 2015 • ( 3 ) I’ve been reading Ben Rachinger’s sequence of posts on what he claims is his adventure with Cameron Slater and hacking the Standard blog. Rachinger alleges Slater arranged to pay him $5000 to hack the blog but he never did the work, instead becoming an undercover operative for the NZ police.
Rachinger’s story is a jumble of names and events that involves a number of NZ political identities including Jessica Williams, (the “political editor” at Radio Live), Matthew Hooton, Russell Brown, David Farrar, Tony Lentino and various other unconfirmed people with supposed money and/ or political influence.
I don’t want to spend too much time on it as other bloggers are covering it in enough detail, other than to say I may be somewhat politically naive, but (if the allegations have even a small amount of truth) it is disappointing to me to see what a rat’s nest of amoral and possible criminal behaviour is being
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I mean we are better than the left aren’t we? We do have principles that involve respect for the law, respect for other people’s property, respect for truth. Respect for one’s self?
If we don’t adhere to those ideas then what is it that makes us different from the Marxists we work to dislodge from power?
The silence from those accused in Rachinger’s exposé is deafening. http://truebluenz.com/2015/05/04/rachingers-rats-nest-dirty-politics-meme- gets-new-lease-of-life/
Pete George: Rachinger continues on Twitter Ben Rachinger switched from his blog to Twitter last night (see Benjamin Rachinger posts for a list of posts). So don’t think I’m a right winger. We were playing high level, high stakes political games.
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Mr Slater owns three firearms according to him.
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Mr Slater on his wife and daughters shooting skills. Oh and suggests 1k down payment for the hack
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Poor Megan Woods.
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Slater on Kim Dotcom.
Mr Slater on Mr Prentice of The Standard.
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Slater on The Standard hack.
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Mr Slater on what The Standard hack was to be used for.
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Mr Slater on my Work Plan re. The Standard hack. Also my Work Plan.
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An aside on claims he was a Young Nat:
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Being fair about JK and Nats once and being followed by him doesn’t make me a Nat. I also advised Greens once.
An aside on support received:
This. Thanks for all the “support” Lefties but yes, thanks those who actually have messaged. Goodnight.
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Maxamillian Shields @publicpurpose
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@B3nRaching3r is there anything that you’ve seen/heard that “proves” the PM himself is behind any of this stuff? Yes Back to the dump:
Slater on Nippert.
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Mr Slater on our PM, Mr Key.
Mr Slater asking me for ____? As I bury my grandfather.
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Mr Slater on Freed.
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Mr Slater on Mr Nash of the Labour Party.
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Mr Slater on Headhunters (88s) and Mr Blomfield.
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Mr Slater on the matter of $500 weekly payments to myself, prior to 5k offer for The Standard hack.
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Mr Slater on SAS being deployed secretly to ME. January.
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Mr Slater on Headhunters(88s)
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Mr Slater on how he got in with the Headhunters.
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Mr Slater on Mr Little being called up to Mr Keys office to get onside about signing away our civil liberties.
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Mr Slater on Mr Russell Brown of Public Address.
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Requests of Mr Slaters.
Asked to “make sure everything you say connects with public interest”:
A known confidante of John Key and assistant to Jason Ede meets organised crime gang members? Public. Interest.
Asked “Am I correct in thinking that you intend to reveal WO’s media contacts soon enough/in good time, or are their barriers?”
I’ll show the journos, bloggers, media types and politicians that Whale deals with this week.
Meanwhile there seems to be a total absence of any mentions of Rachinger’s releases on Whale Oil. That’s to be expected, there is close control on what can be talked about there.
http://yournz.org/2015/05/04/rachinger-continues-on-twitter/
Carrie Stoddart-Smith: The follow-up: The Rachinger posts
In continuing from my previous post: The Rachinger Posts, the following post considers parts 8-11. The allegations effectively revolve around Slater and friends paying hackers to obtain
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In Part 8, Rachinger reveals that Tomas is indeed Tomasz Grygoruk, the blackhat hacker convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison for phishing scams in which he amassed around $300,000. Desleigh Jameson (GM, Instra) co-ordinated Rachinger’s meeting with Lentino and the job offer to work with Grygoruk. The role was to be ambiguously called Tony’s Apprentice.
In Part 9, Rachinger indicates that he was now in direct contact with Grygoruk regarding the Instra role. He also claims that at this time, the identity of the Dirty Politics hacker – Rawshark was circulating in the Press Gallery. It was at this time that Rachinger tweeted “I am Rawshark” as a show of solidarity. Following this, the Instra connection died off, Jameson claims the role never existed and Rachinger receives no further contact.
It’s unclear why Instra shut him out.
Sidenote: Lentino, is the ex-Mega CEO who also spotted money for the Dotcom’s following the raid and asset freeze in January 2013. I am wondering if this will become relevant in later posts. Because there are some unanswered questions:
§ § Was he working with Slater against Dotcom § §
FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post): (4/5/2015)
On the information above, it appears that Lentino was most likely working with Slater following a fall out with Dotcom.
In Part 10, Rachinger alleges that in private conversations, Slater makes clear his dislike of Lynne Prentice, author at The Standard.
Weak evidence: It can probably be ascertained from public record that Slater hates Prentice. After all, The Standard and Whale Oil Beef Hooked blogs are polar opposites [left vs right] and it’s likely the authors behind both sites are too. However, unlike previous posts
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 182 of 309 where Rachinger provides screenshots to confirm many of the views Slater held, in this case, he has not. That could be for various reasons. If the conversation were spoken it would have required Rachinger to have taken audio recordings or for there to be another witness. Why does it matter? It could provide evidence of motive.
FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post): (3/5/2015)
Rachinger then provides a screen grab and email header involving Slater, David Farrar, and Matthew Hooten. The subject of that email involves whether someone can extract information on the authors at The Standard without hacking. Rachinger (somewhat facetiously) posits why he as a hacker was sent that email.
In Part 11, Rachinger makes the unequivocal statement that he was approached by Slater and offered $5,000 to hack The Standard and leave a backdoor to the server for ongoing access.
He claims to have received a $1,000 down payment from Slater and has provided screenshots of his bank statement to support this claim. He states that he never carried out the attack on The Standard.
FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post): (3/5/2015) further confirmation that the hacking was to be funded.
See also (4/5/2015)
Weak evidence: The evidence provided by Rachinger, that he was approached to hack The Standard is circumstantial i.e. his assertion that Slater dislikes Prentice, a forwarded email (involving Slater, Farrar and Hooten) identifying a potential interest in obtaining unauthorised information, a down payment from Slater, and Rachinger’s testimony
This allows us to draw strong inferences but is not conclusive proof.
One problem is that the evidence trail is inconsistent with the email trail of previous job offers involving both Slater and Rachinger. However, given the nature of the job, there is the question as to whether email is an appropriate communication platform when organising a hacking operation? However, one might assume Threema would be used given its high level encryption. So the question is why
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Rachinger does not provide direct evidence explicitly showing Slater soliciting his services for hacking and leaving a backdoor in the Standard system, or more precisely, does he have evidence to that conclusively proves this?
FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post): (3/5/2015)
Rachinger also alleges there were monetary incentives if the information achieved certain outcomes e.g. embarrassment or resignation of opposition MP’s. But he doesn’t provide evidence to substantiate that claim.
Rachinger claims that he was concerned about how ‘deep’ he was in the Whale Oil machine so he went to the Police and was interviewed and questioned without a Lawyer present. His devices were cloned for evidence and although the evidence sheet is not included in his post, he has made it available via his twitter:
He makes further allegations that Slater owns firearms and is connected to organised crime gangs and has powerful funders/backers.
It appears that Rachinger is ‘framing his case’ to illustrate how dangerous he believes Slater and friends to be. This is unsurprising if the allegations that he and his family have received death threats are true.
Weak evidence: Rachinger would probably need to furnish a copy of the firearms licensed to Slater to prove this claim, and. I doubt he has access to that information. Regarding the gang connection, in an earlier post, Rachinger provides a screen shot of a conversation that implies Slater is connected enough to know that the Headhunters gang assaulted Matt Blomfield due to monies Blomfield owed the gang. This is not proof of Slater’s actual connection, since that information could come about via the kumara vine. It also is not evidence that this gang is somehow involved in the immediate issue. But the cumulative effect of that information does speak to the harm that Rachinger appears to believe that Slater through whomever his connections, is capable of inflicting.
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FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post): (3/5/2015) on Slater’s admission to owning firearms. Additionally, apparently this is well known for readers of his blog and those who recall from the Dirty Politics book.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it appears that the Whale Oil machine continues to churn despite the revelations and media interest in Hager’s Dirty Politics. I don’t think that is exactly surprising to anyone. But just because it’s not surprising it’s also not an excuse to turn a blind eye either. That these operations allegedly involve the transfer of money and financial incentives to operatives to illegally extract information for corrupt political ends certainly adds a new and disturbing angle to this rancid behaviour. Additionally, the extent that the threats and operations sought to poison the blogosphere by targeting people behind the two largest left wing political blog sites in Aotearoa is also a real concern for democracy. If it is true that Slater and friends will attempt to destroy any person and undermine every inch of democracy that threatens to expose the machine and disrupt their political agenda then we might want to consider the extent to which the claims made by Rachinger can be substantiated.
Note: It has been suggested to me that I tread very cautiously and very sceptically in dealing with the Rachinger posts. The purpose of writing these summaries was to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the claims made. The analysis is by no means perfect. But I am interested in what readers think, so feel free to leave a (non-abusive, non- threatening) comment.
The Hacker and All the PM’s Men continued:
Part 8: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the- pms-men-part-eight-35d3374fa43e
Part 9: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the- pms-men-part-nine-39f9651c914
Part 10: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all- the-pms-men-part-ten-be7aa6d1839f
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Part 11: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all- the-pms-men-part-eleven-2f3322a0b22a
https://ellipsister.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/the-follow-up-the-rachinger- posts/
The Standard: Rachinger on dirty politics 3 – Scoop takes up the story
WrittenBy: NOTICES AND FEATURES - Date published:12:30 pm, May 4th, 2015 - 20 comments Categories: Dirty Politics, journalism - Tags: #dirtypolitics, ben rachinger, dirty politics For the background please read the first post in this series: Rachinger on dirty politics. Demonstrating yet again the vital role of independent media, Scoop has taken up the story: “I Am Rawshark” – Ben Rachinger’s Sequel To “Dirty Politcs”. Thompson writes: Arguably therefore this is an exceptionally fine piece of undercover investigative journalism into a matter of national significance. [spelling corrected]
Ben’s story is unfolding here, the Scoop piece is a good summary. http://thestandard.org.nz/rachinger-on-dirty-politics-3-scoop-takes-up-the- story/
Alastair Thompson (Scoop): “I Am Rawshark” – Ben Rachinger’s sequel to Dirty Politics
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"I Am Rawshark" - Ben Rachinger's Sequel To "Dirty Politics" Monday, 4 May 2015, 11:28 am Opinion: Alastair Thompson
"I Am Rawshark" - Ben Rachinger's Sequel To "Dirty Politics" - The Hacker and all the PMs Men"
By Alastair Thompson
Odds on @BenRachinger is going to be getting some weird emails and twitter activity notifications for the next few weeks
On April 15th @keith-ng said:
And on April 30th @B3nRaching3r found his voice.
5 days ago he launched a special purpose blog on Medium.com - "The Hacker and all the PMs Men". (An allusion to the movie about Watergate "All The President's Men".)
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The story is a pot-boiling journalistic tale of a trip inside Dark Politics by a brave (some might say foolhardy) young hacker / journalist, a class of new entrants to the media scene who are having a big impact - and some of whom like Chelsea Manning & Barrett Brown who have found themselves martyred for their temerity. "My name is Benjamin Rachinger. I am nobody and that’s the way I’ve always liked it. Having been born severely deaf and growing up wearing hearing aids, I gravitated to computing and reading from a young age. It was an escape from what could sometimes be a harsh world. As I grew up and went through schooling I found that the history of my country was stirring to read. NZ is one of the last geographical landmasses to have been discovered and colonised by the British Empire. There was internecine warfare between Maori (the indigenous people of NZ of whom I racially belong) and other Maori long before Britain came here to colonise. There was warfare between the British Army and Maori when the Maori rose against the landgrabs and cultural genocide that was taking place. We lost. It culiminated in the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. The treaty was a binding agreement between the Crown and the Maori signatories where the Crown promised to respect Maori sovereignty and treat Maori as equals. This has sadly not been the case and many Maori are in prisons, asylums and on the streets in this day and age. Just another Colonial story. Why is this bit of history pertinent to this story? Cameron Slater is a far-right blogger, a fervent Christian man, the son of an Ex-National Party (Right wing political party) President and a man who believes that Whites are superior. A hunter of Animals and Men. Someone who called a recently deceased young man a “feral” on his blog. Ostensibly this was the reason a hacker named “Rawshark” hacked into Mr Slaters Gmail, Twitter and Facebook accounts and fed this data to Mr Nicky Hager
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 188 of 309 and journalists at the New Zealand Herald. This resulted in a book called “Dirty Politics” by Mr Hager, a internationally respected investigative journalist. The book had many points but what it showed was that money, business, hacking and political corruption was becoming the norm in NZ. Mr Slaters blog is called “Whale Oil Beef Hooked” (www.whaleoil.co.nz). It has recently won the Canon “Best Blog” award alongside other awards for “Best Blog”, even subsequent to “Dirty Politics” being published. Many sane and rational people have asked the question: How bad is it behind the veil? Who is doing what? How high does it go? This is what I will be covering in a series of blog posts here. I came as close as it is possible to come to these “Dirty Politics” operators and have rigourously documented every single conversation, email and Threema (Swiss encrypted messaging platform used by spooks, politicians and journalists) messages. Today, you will see what happens behind closed doors, in encrypted messages, in bars and park benches. You will make your own mind up about my motives. You won’t be able to ignore the evidence."
Today @B3nRaching3r is filling in the gaps directly with screen shots of conversations with Cameron Slater.
But it was what he published on Sunday which is likely to have the biggest impact in the twitter sphere and possibly in mainstream news coverage today .
In Part 11 (the latest part in in the series) Ben has published screenshots of Bank records showing payments from Cameron Slater. And in Part 11 an email dated 26th September apparently passed from Matthew Hooton through David Farrar to Cameron Slater and then on to him.
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Click for big version ABOVE: email from Hooton (@MatthewHootonNZ to David Farrar of Kiwiblog (@dpfdpf )
BELOW: and then from @whaleoil to @b3nRaching3r.
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Click for big version.
Which is a provocative allegation to make. Days after the September 20th election the National Party affiliated network of black-hat activity is back in action. (N.B. these emails do not show that Hooton and Farrar are aware of Cameron Slater's activities - but rather just that Slater is continuing to pursue black hat methods against the Labour Party targets and that Hooton and Farrar are continuing to feed information his way.)
While the screenshots theoretically "could be fabrications" the sheer number of them and the fact that Ben Rachinger is able to produce material such as this selfie with Tony Lentino's plane (from Part 8) makes it hard to quickly discard his central allegation, namely that in or around February 2015 the former Prime Minister's office attack blogger of choice commissioned Ben Rachinger to hack The Standard (thestandard.org.nz) and made a down- payment and offered success fees.
But to focus exclusively on this allegation is to do Ben's overall work a disservice.
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The narrative that he is carving out for himself (as disclosed in his introduction post extracted above) is quite broad - nothing less than a voyage inside the world of Cameron Slater's Whaleoil and his relationship with Tony Lentino, the one-time millionaire backer of Kim Dotcom who fell out with the MEGA founder and toyed for several months with the idea of setting up a news service (see: Freed.nz & @freednz) with Cameron Slater and Throng.co.nz blogger Regan Cunliffe.
So far the saga includes: 1. A hacker friend of former MEGA CEO and freed.nz sponsor Tony Lentino called Tomas.
2. A police informant handler with whom he has encrypted communications. .. " At the same time as this was happening, my Police handler in the Undercover Informants program was sending me messages like this:"
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[NOTE: Here Ben tells the story of being introduced to his handler - they knocked on his parent's door two days after the September 20th election.] " We left off the story with the cops knocking on my parents door.
I rang the Policeman who had left his card and enquired as to just exactly what he thought he was doing coming to my parents house and enquiring after me. I was very, very angry. My parents are Right-Wing voters who support the National Government and were looking askance at me now that cops were coming to their house. My parents are quiet people who don’t wish for any extra stress as they head into their 60s. The cop said that they had been “monitoring my twitter feed” and also that “Cameron Slater says you have inside knowledge of the Rawshark hack”. I politely replied that I would come down to the local Police Station and be interviewed.
This policeman, a Detective Senior Sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Bureau (C.I.B.), instructed me that he did not want me coming down to the Police Station. Would I meet him at a cafe for a conversation? I replied that I would. I did this against the advice of everyone I knew. I did this because I thought the Police could be trusted to look out for the well-being of the citizens of New Zealand. I made plans to meet him the next day."
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3. And (later in part 6) talk from Cameron Slater of requesting Israeli support.
Conclusion
Particularly regarding questions around credulity - which are likely to be the talk of the day on Twitter as Ben's story gains traction and fans.
Yes it is possible that some of what Ben is reporting in this epic piece is fantasy, fabrication or misunderstanding. Clearly there are as yet lots of big holes in the story which he will need to feed for this to come into focus. But if it is fabrication and fantasy, it is an extraordinarily well put together piece of theatre. Full of the inconsistencies and confusions of real interactions between people.
The conversations with Slater ring true to those in the Dirty Politics Book. This comes from the tweet referenced at the beginning. Allegedly Cameron Slater to Ben :
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And because of this my money is on it not being a fabrication. The story rings true and it is increasing in coherence in the telling. It is also important. Ben is alleging that the police are actively looking into the activities of the Prime Minister and former Justice Minister's friend Cameron Slater, and that Slater is continuing to actively try to hack for political purposes, and is being funded by someone - as yet unrevealed.
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Aguably therefore this is an exceptionally fine piece of undercover investigative journalism into a matter of national significance.
Like Rawshark (and let me emphasise that Ben Rachinger says he is not Rawshark - his tweet was a joke) Ben is taking his own counsel on how to tell his story. Also Like Rawshark he is doing so quite well. He doesn't have all the skills an experienced journalist would employ in these circumstances - but he is certainly able to craft a good yarn.
Like Rawshark Ben has had also some issues in social media and media relations around strategy - but again, arguably these pratfalls in the "Meta" telling of the story are a signature of this new and rather compelling genre. We could call it "the real lives of geeks who are trying to save the world" for want of a better moniker. Citizen Four comes from this Genre as does Quinn Norton and Barrett Brown's work.
Irony is also ever present in this account.
Ben is using Slater's techniques of control against him. Cameron's Modus Operandi is to screenshot and record material and then threaten his contacts with exposure.
This method was demonstrated shortly before Christmas against none other than Prime Minister John Key in the "screen-shotted texts" fiasco. In this odd affair the PM appeared to bald-facedly lie to the media before being forced to make an apology to the house over the question of whether he had had contact with Cameron Slater.
He later released a transcript of the text exchange with Slater which he had deleted from his own phone, but which Slater was helpfully able to supply him.
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Text messages released by PM's office.
Click images for bigger versions (CONTEXT: To recap this occurred during the release of the IGIS report into the release of classified information to Cameron Slater about Israeli Spy briefings given to Phil Goff >> CLICK FOR FULL COVERAGE.
While the "I am Rawshark" tweet was a joke - and according to Ben cost him his job with Tony Lentino on the Freed project - Ben's new journalistic series on Medium . "The Hacker and all the PMs Men"unquestionably is walking in the steps of the Dirty Politics story and a worthy sequel to the RawShark phenomena.
And I for one am watching closely for developments. "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." - Yeats
- Alastair Thompson May 4 2015 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1505/S00006/i-am-rawshark-ben- rachingers-sequel-to-dirty-politcs.htm
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The Standard: Rachinger on dirty politics
WrittenBy: NOTICES AND FEATURES - Date published:7:15 am, May 1st, 2015 - 57 comments Categories: Dirty Politics - Tags: #dirtypolitics, ben rachinger, dirty politics Ben Rachinger is an ex Young National member and was a big fan of John Key. He’s a self professed computer security expert. He’s a controversial and polarising figure in social media (claims and counterclaims abound).
For some time Ben has been claiming to have been drawn in to / infiltrated the world of dirty politics. He claims to have been working as a police informant. He has been posting snippets of information on Twitter, including some supporting his claim that Cameron Slater offered him $5,000 to “hack” The Standard. He has posted snippets that show David Farrar, Cameron Slater and Matthew Hooton trying to get access to our internal author posts. He has discussed various claims with various journalists, but nothing public has resulted from it. He has claimed to have further information relating to journalists and other dirty politics players. He claims to have material that will embarrass both the “right” and the “left” of politics, and that he is disgusted by both. He has claimed that he is receiving death threats, visits from the police, and other forms of harassment. Despite the relevance to this blog, we haven’t previously posted on Ben’s claims. It hasn’t been clear how seriously to take them, and we didn’t want to add to the many pressures that he is apparently under. Apart from a brief and inconclusive exchange between Ben and lprent on Twitter there has been no contact between Ben and The Standard authors.
Over the last two days Ben has been telling his story much more slowly and systematically, and better supported (by multiple screenshots) than he has before. There are seven “blog” posts here, with more to come. (Too long to read? Another blogger summarises here.) Because word of Ben’s account is spreading we’re finally posting on it, but we do so without comment or endorsement at this stage. We suggest that readers not try to contact Ben. Evaluate his evidence carefully, but leave him be to tell his story in his own time. Don’t expect anything in particular. Masks and mirrors. http://thestandard.org.nz/rachinger-on-dirty-politics/
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The Standard: Rachinger on dirty politics 2
WrittenBy: NOTICES AND FEATURES - Date published:11:44 am, May 3rd, 2015 - 13 comments Categories: Dirty Politics - Tags: #dirtypolitics, ben rachinger, dirty politics For the background please read the first post in this series: Rachinger on dirty politics. Ben’s story has reached an interesting point, check out the new posts (9, 10, 11) on his blog. Ben is producing more evidence, and making claims that can be checked. We repeat our request not to put any pressure on Ben. He’s telling his story, leave him to it.
Can I (Anthony) add on a personal note that anyone that thought hacking this blog would lead them to any information that would embarrass Labour – lead to resignations FFS – is actually mad. La la land. There’s nothing to see here. http://thestandard.org.nz/rachinger-on-dirty-politics-2/
Pete George (Your NZ): Prentice admits “fighting dirty politics”
In what appears to be a case of blatantly ignoring a High Court interim injunction Lynn Prentice has also stated that this is a way of fighting dirty politics without his hands tied. Likely. As I have no idea who it is, So to conform to the reported suppression, I will just limit people saying explicitly which minister it is.
I also note that there has been nothing reported about the alleged victims seeking suppression.
Mind you, after the questions on how Carmel’s mothers name got into media, I am only inclined to follow the letter of suppression orders when it comes to the politically associated.
If it is good enough for Paula Bennett to play games with the courts and relatives, then I can’t be bothered fighting dirty politics with my hands tied….
So this an all out dirty war? Prentice may claim to be fighting against dirty politics but this looks just about as dirty as anything.
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He could understandably be agitated by Rachinger’s ‘paid to hack The Standard’ claim but I think he’s taking a big risk here. He may follow Cameron Slater’s example of court trouble through breaching suppression just to be vindictive – another Slater trait shared. (I have seen claims that Bennett may have fed a story to the media but I haven’t seen any evidence of it). http://yournz.org/2015/05/03/prentice-admits-fighting-dirty-politics/
Carrie Stoddart-Smith: The Rachinger posts
For the past six or so months, Ben Rachinger has claimed to have a deep knowledge of the extent of corruption in New Zealand’s political system. He has prided Nicky Hager’s book “Dirty Politics” for bringing to the fore the diseased apparatus toxifying the New Zealand government and media. Rachinger has recently begun publishing a series of posts of his direct experience in the Whaleoil machine at the centre of the corruption in this country. [Links to all seven posts he has published so far are available at the bottom of this post]
There has been some criticism of his posts. Some readers suggesting they don’t really reveal anything new, others criticising gaps in the information and some dismissing him as a tin foiler.
Whatever your view, here is what I surmise from the series so far:
Rachinger was a Young Nat and deeply concerned about the lack of information available to voters in the lead up to election. In particular, he took exception to Kim Dotcom’s play for political power and published a video explaining Dotcom’s criminal history and distasteful ethics. He also addressed the rot in the National Party who he supported at that time. Both videos were published on Cameron Slater’s Whaleoil blog site.
Following this Rachinger built a rapport with Slater offering to assist him with his blog security issues – something Rachinger is apparently skilled in. This led to a job offer to join Slater’s ‘Freed’ media venture. Some emails were exchanged.
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When Dirty Politics unraveled Rachinger began to question what he’d got himself into. This was confirmed to him when Slater showed a complete lack of empathy toward the murders of the WINZ workers who had been shot dead at their workplace in Ashburton.
Soon after the election Rachinger advises he was contacted by Police and subsequently did some undercover work for them to try identify Rawshark and gather intel on the Whaleoil machine.
[Missing information: Why did Police make contact with Rachinger in the first place?]
Rachinger continued to work with Slater and his network to identify Rawshark. But claims to never have engaged in any of the illegal activity that was being carried out.
Communications took place via an encrypted service based in Switzerland called Threema. The service was used on the recommendation of the Israeli Embassy in NZ.
[Inference: Presumably this allowed operators to bypass detection by security agencies or the prying eyes of the State apparatus.]
Rachinger learned that Slater’s network consisted of ten people and they were trying to gather intel to use against Laila Harre and Martyn Bradbury. He was introduced to someone called Tomas with a criminal history as a black hat hacking operative. Tomas was allegedly based in Poland. A subsequent screengrab suggests that Tomas was Jason Ede – the mastermind identified in Dirty Politics.
[Missing information: There is a disjuncture between the screen grab stating (a) Tomas is Ede, and the suggestion that (b) Tomas was actually Tomas Grygoruk. I can’t make out if Tomas is (a) or (b) ]
Rachinger writes that the Israeli embassy were interested in investigating the Rawshark case too, for a not yet specified reason. He then shows he is eventually accepted into the Whaleoil machine when Slater tells him Tony Lentino has a job for him.
To summarise, the Whaleoil machine involves National Party heavies, the Israeli government, Cathy Odgers and a team of hackers not afraid to carry out illegal activities and Tony Lentino. They use an encrypted
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 201 of 309 message service to bypass security agencies and hack into systems to illegally obtain information on people they want to get revenge on. Rachinger claims to have gone undercover for Police to help identify the Rawshark hacker and gather dirt on Whaleoil. Rachinger implies that Tony Lentino pulls a lot of strings.
This is the extent of the Rachinger posts so far.
At the moment there isn’t exactly anything new or at least anything that we hadn’t already inferred. But it is potentially a reinforcement of Dirty Politics and it is shaping up to look like an expose by a person who was directly involved in the Whaleoil machine and who claims to have a personal experience of how this disease operates and precisely who is involved and to what extent.
Shorter still? Here is how I’d describe what I think Rachinger is trying to say so far:
New Zealand’s political corruption – It’s like chucking back a stale marmite sandwich because there’s nothing else to eat and finding out afterwards Slater and his friends took turns discharging their lung butter into it.
Note: If you think I’ve missed something or misunderstood let me know in the comments.
The Series of The Hacker and All the PM’s Men by Ben Rachinger
Part 1: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men- part-one-a094cf55ac9c
Part 2: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men- 4d3014ac4ace
Part 3: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men- part-three-53dc14a53a71
Part 4: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men- part-four-ac8c01388bc6
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Part 5: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men- part-five-85cbc9d78430
Part 6: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men- part-six-da511d67e48d
Part 7: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men- part-seven-1bd54289b05e https://ellipsister.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/the-rachinger-posts/
The Posts: http://bit.ly/Hacker1st
http://bit.ly/Hacker2nd
http://bit.ly/Hacker3
http://bit.ly/Hacker4
http://bit.ly/Hacker5th
http://bit.ly/Hacker6
http://bit.ly/Hacker7th
http://bit.ly/Hacker8
Benjamin Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part One)
My name is Benjamin Rachinger. I am nobody and that’s the way I’ve always liked it. Having been born severely deaf and growing up wearing hearing aids,
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I gravitated to computing and reading from a young age. It was an escape from what could sometimes be a harsh world.
As I grew up and went through schooling I found that the history of my country was stirring to read. NZ is one of the last geographical landmasses to have been discovered and colonised by the British Empire. There was internecine warfare between Maori (the indigenous people of NZ of whom I racially belong) and other Maori long before Britain came here to colonise. There was warfare between the British Army and Maori when the Maori rose against the landgrabs and cultural genocide that was taking place. We lost. It culiminated in the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. The treaty was a binding agreement between the Crown and the Maori signatories where the Crown promised to respect Maori sovereignty and treat Maori as equals. This has sadly not been the case and many Maori are in prisons, asylums and on the streets in this day and age. Just another Colonial story.
Why is this bit of history pertinent to this story?
Cameron Slater is a far-right blogger, a fervent Christian man, the son of an Ex-National Party (Right wing political party) President and a man who believes that the White man is superior. A hunter of animals and Men. Someone who called a recently deceased young man a “feral” on his blog. Ostensibly this was the reason a hacker named “Rawshark” hacked into Mr Slaters Gmail, Twitter and Facebook accounts and fed this data to Mr Nicky Hager and journalists at the New Zealand Herald. This resulted in a book called “Dirty Politics” by Mr Hager, a internationally respected investigative journalist. The book had many points but what it showed was that money, business, hacking and political corruption was becoming the norm in NZ.
Mr Slaters blog is called “Whale Oil Beef Hooked” (www.whaleoil.co.nz). It has recently won the Canon “Best Blog” award alongside other awards for “Best Blog”, even subsequent to “Dirty Politics” being published. Many sane and rational people have asked the question: How bad is it behind the veil? Who is doing what? How high does it go?
This is what I will be covering in a series of blog posts here. I came as close as it is possible to come to these “Dirty Politics” operators and have rigourously documented every single conversation, email and Threema (Swiss encrypted messaging platform used by spooks, politicians and journalists) messages.
Today, you will see what happens behind closed doors, in encrypted messages, in bars and park benches. You will make your own mind up about my motives. You won’t be able to ignore the evidence. https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part- one-a094cf55ac9c
Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Two)
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I first came to the attention of Mr Slater when I read a tweet from him saying that his website, www.whaleoil.co.nz, was under distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in March of 2014. I tweeted back at him and asked what protections he had in place and gave some general advice. He asked me to email his website administrator/security man. This person is Regan Cunliffe of ‘Throng’. Regans wife, Rachel, designed the Whaleoil website. I didn’t have any spare time to help further so I did not email Regan and we left it at that.
2014 was a General Election year. Elections take place every 3 years in New Zealand. In 2014 we had a lot of upsets to the process via the presence of Mr Kim Dotcom funding a political party (InternetMana). InternetMana was ostensibly a strong crypto-anarchist party with great people as candidates that had joined with a Maori Socialist Party to get into Parliament. I became worried that people in New Zealand did not know of Kim Dotcoms past. I then decided that I would make a set of videos about each of the political parties in New Zealand. I entitled the series “Smoke and Mirrors”. My first video was on Kim Dotcom.
The video is here on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VARd8pMIvCQ
I messaged Mr Slater and linked him to my video and asked what he thought. I did this because he is a political operator and I wanted his opinion going forward with the rest of my videos. Mr Slater said he was interested in posting the video to WhaleOil and asked me to write a bit about myself. A screenshot of my email reply to him is below.
Mr Slater then linked to the video on Whaleoil.
This created a lot of buzz and talk. Whaleoil is said to be the most read blog in New Zealand so this was good exposure for the videos. WhaleOil commenters were overwhemingly positive and many called me a good representation for the future of my generation (LOL).
I then made and uploaded my second ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ video which was about the National Party (Governing party) and John Key (Prime Minister).
This video is viewable on Youtube here — https://youtu.be/e7UvJXAKMtU
This video covered many things that were largely heretofore unknown about the current National Party President and I was very surprised Mr Slater published it. It created a feeling in me that Mr Slater was fair and if someone was dodgy, he would out them. No matter the Party.
As I was to find out next, this is not the case. https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men- 4d3014ac4ace
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Benjamin Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Three)
Having gotten the videos published by Mr Slater on his blog and accepted his request on LinkedIn to be connected I began to slowly form a chitchat relationship with Mr Slater. He wondered what I did for a living and I told him that I was IT consulting with a social media focus for a few companies. He was interested in my thoughts on his ‘Freed’ media vehicle he was establishing with Tony Lentino and Regan Cunliffe (tripartite shareholding in the vehicle). I sent him my analysis of the NZ media scene which I place here for your viewing.
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I was introduced to Regan Cunliffe via email and first discovered Mr Slaters close ties to Israel.
I was one foot in the door. Little did I know exactly what was behind this door. I went in with the best of intentions.
http://bit.ly/Hacker3
Benjamin Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Four)
Mr Hagers book “Dirty Politics” came out on 13th of August in 2014. I was out of the country in Australia on a holiday for 5 days when I first heard the whispers that there was a book that would be revealing Government wrongdoing. I streamed the book launch at Unity and was amazed at just what was happening. Excerpts from the book that were published that evening appeared to show that Mr Slater had been hacked (at the time I had initially tweeted him back about the DDoS) and his personal communications had been leaked to Mr Hager. I was bewildered and, I must admit, immediately wishing I did not have my videos on Mr Slaters blog.
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I messaged Mr Slater on Twitter to ask him what was going on? Was it true? He was in Israel on a paid trip (Israel funded) and did not respond straight away. When he did, it was to complain about the hack.
Some people had been posting what they alleged was Mr Slaters home address. This got my back up because NO MATTER what someone has done.. Why endanger their family? Their children? I was dumbfounded at what was happening! Had we collectively lost our ability for critical thought? For strategic planning? There was an Election coming in September. Things had just taken a drastic turn.
Mr R. Cunliffe replied to my emails after a few days.
Mr Cunliffe has never demonstrated any knowledge of “Dirty Politics” and his email is only included for context in the build-up to talking about Freed and what I learned in that process.
Mr Slater quickly asked me if I knew anything about the hack and where Mr Hager may have gotten his data from. I can only surmise that this was because I have some knowledge of the hacking scene. Apparently this is in short supply.
Out of my own curiosity I began to investigate the possibilities for who the hacker could be. Shortly after this the Twitter handle @Whaledump popped up. Ostensibly this handle was the hacker themselves Rawshark. This account started to drop personal information, alongside more leaks, about Mr Slater and his alleged co-conspirators. I was interested to note that the first person it followed was @KimDotcom. The account made many challenges that their Operational Security was 100% tight and they would never be found.
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My curiosity now fully aroused, I began to have conversations with Mr Slater about who Rawshark could be. After some investigating Mr Slater asked me to speak to the Police task-force who were working the Rawshark hack case. I demurred as I did not have any clear and present evidence about the identity of Rawshark.
I watched with interest what happened on Election Night 2014. I wholly expected the National Government to be hammered in the results because reading the “Dirty Politics” showed me a side to the Government we had not previously seen. The Governments response to the book and the leaks was heavily interesting too.. They didn't deny the content of the book and a Mr Jason Ede, a employee of the Prime Ministers office, had gone to ground in hiding after his role in feeding Government attack lines to Mr Slater was revealed. Misuse of the NZ Security Intelligence Service was revealed also. How deep did it go?
The National Government was returned to power with an INCREASED majority despite the book.
The date was September 20. Two days later my parents were to answer a knock on their door. They looked through their peephole to see a plainclothes policeman holding up his badge. They were asked by this policeman where I was and that they wanted to speak to me ASAP. I did not live with my parents so I was dismayed to receive a call from them telling me the Police had been by.
How deep does the rabbit hole go? Do the New Zealand Police answer to Mr Slater? We will take a look at that in the next parts and also cover the introductions I had to the Freed group and what I discovered there. Not to mention the ‘Israel Connection’. https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part- four-ac8c01388bc6
http://bit.ly/Hacker4
The Hacker and all the PMs men
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We left off the story with the cops knocking on my parents door.
I rang the Policeman who had left his card and enquired as to just exactly what he thought he was doing coming to my parents house and enquiring after me. I was very, very angry. My parents are Right-Wing voters who support the National Government and were looking askance at me now that cops were coming to their house. My parents are quiet people who don’t wish for any extra stress as they head into their 60s. The cop said that they had been “monitoring my twitter feed” and also that “Cameron Slater says you have inside knowledge of the Rawshark hack”. I politely replied that I would come down to the local Police Station and be interviewed.
This policeman, a Detective Senior Sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Bureau (C.I.B.), instructed me that he did not want me coming down to the Police Station. Would I meet him at a cafe for a conversation? I replied that I would. I did this against the advice of everyone I knew. I did this because I thought the Police could be trusted to look out for the well-being of the
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Back in late August, Whale and I had been exchanging Threema messages about the possible ID of “Rawshark”. Whale requested that I get in contact with a “trusted friend”. These screenshots below show the buildup to this contact.
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The first mention of “Exoro”
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More buildup.
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By this point I was wondering — Who is Tony? Where’s Springhill? Who’s this outside help from Poland?
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Tomas? Did I know any Tomas? I had only a first name and I knew of no Tomas with hacking skills.
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Nobody had any evidence of Bradbury and Harre connection to the Rawshark hack. I kept my eyes open and made contact with Tomas on Threema. It was very
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Tomas requested the personal email address of a lot of people. It is not for me to say why he wanted these email addresses. I did not give any email addresses other than publicly available ones. I received this reply from Tomas.
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By this stage I wanted to know who Tomas was. For my own safety at the very minimum. I was becoming increasingly aware that potentially illegal activities were taking place. I asked Tomas who he was really.
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I was soon to find out that ‘Tomas’ is actually Tomasz Grygoruk. A convicted and jailed black-hacker who works for Tony Lentino of Instra.
This is a link to a NZ Herald article about Mr Grygoruk — http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id= 1&objectid=10737391
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The plot had thickened considerably. Just who exactly was ‘Tony’? What was Tomasz relationship to Cam? Was everyone hacking each other except me?
https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part- five-85cbc9d78430
Ben Rachinger:
The Hacker and all the PMs Men (Part Six)
Having made an introduction to ‘Tomas’ and been asked for email addresses of people believed to be involved in the ‘Rawshark’ hack, things started to get very interesting.
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This is ‘Tomas’ seeing if I can, or anyone I know, get access to a Joomla site that was tied to who these people alleged was ‘Rawshark’. I did no cracking and left it.
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Around this time there were the WINZ shootings. I was interested to see if Mr Slater was going to do a piece about it so I sent him a Threema message.
I was truly beginning to see who I was dealing with.
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As I had shown that I was prepared to speak with a Blackhat and do some digging, I was told that a Mr Tony Lentino wanted to meet me.
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At the same time as this was happening, my Police handler in the Undercover Informants program was sending me messages like this:
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I was still unsure as to who exactly ‘Tomas’ was at this point. The Police were happy to have me go deep undercover without any training. Mr Hager had been raided by this point and I was very worried that any
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At this stage, I was meeting my Police handler at least once a week. On park benches and in cafes. It was like something out of a movie.
My Police handler informed me that Mr Hager had been raided before I received the message above. I leaked this information to a journalist as securely as possible. I felt that raiding a journalist for writing a book was a step towards a fascist state.
I was going to be proven right.
https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part-six- da511d67e48d
http://bit.ly/Hacker6
The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Seven)
At this stage I was an undercover Police asset in both the investigation into Rawshark and the ongoing look at Mr Slater. I had no training and no awareness of the dangers I was facing. The Undercover Agent handler was taking extreme precautions before we met to make
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I began to have discussions with Mr Slater about meeting Mr Lentino about the possibility of a ‘job’. It was never discussed at that point as to what the job would actually be.
Mr Slater had made it clear that he believed there was a conspiracy to have him commit suicide over the results of the hack off his accounts.
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Mr Slater also believed that there was a possibility of others being involved.
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We have the first mention of the Headhunters, an organised crime gang that is prominent in NZ. How did
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Mr Slater know Mr Blomfield owed the Headhunters money?
At this time I went down to Wellington to see a family member and met Mr Slater in real life for the first time. He was facing an inquiry into his “Dirty Politics” alleged involvement and I wanted to see what he was like in the flesh. Subsequent to our meeting in Library Bar, I recieved this message.
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I was “in” with Tony.
Where would this go? https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part- seven-1bd54289b05e
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http://bit.ly/Hacker7th
Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Eight)
This part is wholly about the “Instra job” I was being offered as all the other madness was proceeding.
Mr Slater put me into contact with the CEO of Instra, Desleigh Jameson.
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I was given a fair idea of what the ‘job’ I was being hired for was.
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Initially I had to meet Jameson at a residence for an initial interview. I passed that initial test.
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I was invited out to the Lentino estate in Springhill. Tony Lentino, ex-CEO of MEGA and multi-millionaire wanted me out at his estate. I had some transport issues but because I valued the opportunity to pitch to a tech millionaire I got it solved.
Tony's estate is quite something. He has an amazing private jet. Mr Lentino went out of his way to show me around.
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Me freaking out slightly at #datjetlife
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That’s Mr Lentino to the right. The meeting took over four hours and myself and Mr Lentino got along very well.
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He was proud to tell me that ‘Tomas’ was actually Tomasz Grygoruk. Mr Lentino had kept Mr Grygoruks newspaper clippings of when he was jailed for blackhat hacking offences — http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id= 1&objectid=10737391
Mr Lentino was effusive about my skills and potential added value. He gave the thumbs up to his CEO. Jameson then put me into direct and clear contact with Mr Gryogruk.
I’ll continue the “Instra” story in the next post. https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part- eight-35d3374fa43e
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http://bit.ly/Hacker8
Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Nine)
I began to have conversations with Tomasz about joining the Instra team and working directly with Mr Lentino.
Tomasz has a great Skype picture.
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Tomasz and myself had many conversations over the next few days and I was sent extra information pertaining to the job I was about to begin.
Alongside this set of events, I had received word that the Identity of “Rawshark” was being spoken about in the Press Gallery and also by persons that Mr Slater had spoken to. I sent out the now infamous tweet “I am Rawshark” in a show of solidarity for whom this person was believed to be. They had recently had a baby. She was days old at this point.
After that tweet, things started to go downhill with Instra. Jameson called me and told me that the job had never existed. She said that Instra was being sold and always had been. She said that Tony wasn’t hiring anymore and they would get back to me. Mr Slater did
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She never contacted me again.
Now begins that start of Mr Slater and my journey to the conspiracy to hack ‘The Standard’ blog for politically damaging information to use in Parliament. https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part- nine-39f9651c914
http://bit.ly/Hacker9
Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Ten)
The Standard is a blog that is nominally aligned with the NZ Labour Party. The sysadmin is a man named Lynne Prentice. Mr Prentice and Mr Slater have a long history of rigourous debate and mud slinging amongst themselves and as per conversations I’ve had with Mr Slater…
He really does not like Mr Prentice.
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The first time I ever got an idea of Mr Slater, Mr Matthew Hooton and Mr David Farrars dislike for The Standard was when I received this email as a forward from Mr Slater.
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Why were Mr Hooton and Mr Farrar so keen to see who the authors on The Standard are? Why did they include Mr Slater in this email? Why would Mr Slater send that email to me?
Full email header. This proves to techies that the email is real and was forwarded to me from Mr Slater.
Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: by 10.140.100.227 with SMTP id s90csp17099qge; Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:51:21 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path:
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Authentication-Results: mr.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 10.224.80.131 as permitted sender) [email protected]; dkim=pass [email protected] X-Received: from mr.google.com ([10.224.80.131]) by 10.224.80.131 with SMTP id t3mr25205339qak.35.1411710681311 (num_hops = 1); Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:51:21 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply- to:references:from:date:message-id:subject:to :content-type; bh=bI7M6nI5W/7DvI4AT0OvP1bQJlyEzvS6QavJlmw35b8=; b=Dgxuq0bhoyYPcAiFMoR1PZadZP/oQPqR4hSKLhmMTacNH7hbNGs8Mp yfKEiV/roGXW
2pfwfMqWaNxnrwqqsV3PgJxe3lLRTxx9pvSCj4624CrLMX5rlfROWpB3 veTMiGCuJetX
Pcelt05YEgV4ujiFMaXXIiYS2SHTe8/D97DKrqYTY2DstVQtEpzv5svP BazwuarbPGVJ yWT+cZv3xy09AkJ4mBtQTF/2lVZeFdXJj86pkANqXIveqAbB8y7Oww+R EB7293jvCK8c
BcQyVTLRXTv04g3P+iAmrccn5jOg/Gb5BcgcysI8hmHIY6B1h5yu5kZA 2RltKfQtb5q8 x3VA== X-Received: by 10.224.80.131 with SMTP id t3mr25205339qak.35.1411710681291; Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:51:21 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.140.102.168 with HTTP; Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:51:01 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> References: <94FA141B-89A9-495F-A02A- [email protected]> <[email protected]> From: Cam Slater
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Message-ID:
--001a11c3bcccaf48d50503f18103 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001a11c3bcccaf48d20503f18102
--001a11c3bcccaf48d20503f18102 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
------Forwarded message ------From: David Farrar
Looks like their search may be picking up the internal authors list? Anyway of getting to them? Without hacking of course.
*Sent:* Friday, 26 September 2014 1:46 p.m. *To:* David Farrar *Subject:* what is "internal discussion 26/09/2014" ???
*MATTHEW HOOTON* | *EXCELTIUM CORPORATE AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS* | P: + 64 9 369 5263 |M: + 64 21 766031 | F: + 64 9 369 5264 | [email protected]
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STREET | WWW.EXCELTIUM.COM
--001a11c3bcccaf48d20503f18102 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Unlike what Mr Hooton derogatorily claims on Twitter. https://twitter.com/MatthewHootonNZ/status/573312 082700984320
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What did “without hacking of course” really mean? Why send this email to a hacker? Why deny the emails
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Why. https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part-ten- be7aa6d1839f
http://bit.ly/Hacker10
Ben Rachinger: The Hacker and all the PMs men (Part Eleven)
(A fast forward because I’m time pressed today. I will backtrack and show the buildup plus the “work list” in a later post.)
Statement on the matter of Mr Cameron Slater and payment for hacking for political purposes.
I, Ben Rachinger, was approached to hack “The Standard”, a Labour party affiliated blogsite, by Cameron Slater on behalf of his unnamed funder in February 2015. These parties offered me $5,000 to gain access to “The Standard” blogsite and to get the ‘Authors List’. I was also to leave a backdoor in the server so the parties could get access anytime they wished. The reasons for the ‘Authors List’ having such
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Extra bonuses above the $5,000 were offered for resignations and timing. It was not clear exactly what the monetary sum being offered for that was but there was mention of an additional $5,000.
Cameron Slater paid $1,000 as a down payment for the hacking from his company ‘Social Media Consulting’ directly into my bank account with the references being “Dark Lord”.
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I did not and have not done the hacking of ‘The Standard’. Upon the date of Parliament opening and the
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I had been keeping substantial records of interactions between all parties as a matter of diligence.
The NZ Police asked me to come into the Manakau Police Station and make a recorded statement about the alleged conspiracy to hack ‘The Standard’. I consented to doing this interview on my own and without a lawyer present.
This interview took place over 2 hours with a few 5 minute breaks. I was asked repeatedly if I had done the hack, about my computing/network security skills and what had lead me to be in contact with Mr Slater.
I was sure to tell the Police that Slater had, in messages, talked about owning multiple firearms, meeting organized crime gang members regularly and had powerful backers/funders.
The decision to go to the Police and make a statement was prompted by my awareness I was in ‘Deep’ with very dangerous and angry people.
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The Police took my devices, with my consent, for cloning. My devices, Smartphone/Tablet/Laptop were sent to the Dunedin Electronic Crime Laboratory for cloning. This process took a month. I then had my devices returned to me by the Detectives and asked additional questions about the evidence.
I have heard from the Police subsequently and it is my understanding the Police are very keen to interview Mr Slater about the evidence I have provided them.
I have faith that the Police are free of political pressure and interference and are processing my evidence.
This is complicated by the swirling rumours that I am ‘Rawshark’. This has been pushed by the attack blog “Lauda Finem”.
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Link to the LF article here- http://laudafinem.com/2015/04/21/whale-oil-hack- dirty-politics-new-zealand-police-arrest-cyber-activist- with-strong-labour-party-connections/
I have not been arrested by the Police.
I have been receiving death threats and have had family members called and have had them threatened.
I can only hope that justice and a free press still prevails in New Zealand. https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part- eleven-2f3322a0b22a
http://bit.ly/Hacker11
Redbaiter: Cameron Slater, Ben Rachinger, and hacking
BY REDBAITER ON APRIL 28, 2015 • ( 3 )
The blog Lauda Finem is claiming political activist Ben Rachinger has been arrested by the police for hacking.
Sometime ago the Whaleoil Blog ran some vidoes of Rachinger speaking his political views. I wondered at the time why this was done, as Rachinger was no one of any import, and really had nothing special to say in the videos. So why were those videos given space and prominence?
From the Lauda Finem story, it is unclear who or what was hacked or even if Rachinger did anything at all. Or even that the police have arrested
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Rachinger. Lauda Finem suggests he has connections with Standard people. I thought he was a member of the Young Nats but his politics are so confusing I don’t really know what he is. Apparently there is an email trail in the story that involves David Farrar at some stage. This would suggest a connection with National.
A post on Reddit alleges that on Twitter Rachinger claimed that Cameron Slater agreed to pay him $5000 to hack the Standard blog. Rachinger posted on Twitter a graphic of a text conversation he claims is between himself and Slater where the fee is discussed. (see below) However the actual task is not clearly identified as a hack.
I can only guess that Rachinger has some kind of technical expertise whereby he gets involved in website design, and this brought him into contact with the Standard and with Whaleoil. From there it gets murky, but one thing that does seems pretty clear is that Rachinger is alleging Whale agreed to hire him to hack the Standard and to pay him a fee of $5000 to do so.
Rachinger appears to have a somewhat erratic personality, and Cameron Slater is not a complete fool. No one with the ability to think clearly would imagine it a good idea to get involved with Rachinger in anything involving subterfuge. I would be surprised if the allegation Slater hired Rachinger to hack has any substance to it.
The graphic below could relate to any kind of business transaction, and there is only Rachinger’s claim that it involves a hacking assignment.
Normally I wouldn’t give the tale much credence, but if Lauda Finem’s story on Rachinger’s arrest is true, it brings some stronger meaning to the story. However the alleged arrest could quite easily relate to some other hacking event, or maybe not even a hacking event at all.
One wonders why Slater hasn’t said more in relation to this event. He’s silent too on the delay in the start up of his new media venture Freed.
Whale Oil Hack – Dirty politics, New Zealand Police arrest cyber activist with strong labour party connections
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Graphic of alleged text conversation between Slater and Rachinger Reddit discussion.
Update: Since this story was published, Ben Rachinger has started blogging on this issue in a very lucid series of posts. http://truebluenz.com/2015/04/28/cameron-slater-ben-rachinger-and-hacking/
THE FOLLOW-UP: THE RACHINGER POSTS
In continuing from my previous post: The Rachinger Posts, the following post considers parts 8-11. The allegations effectively revolve around Slater and friends paying hackers to obtain information that can be subsequently used to embarrass opposition MP’s and force them to resign.
In Part 8, Rachinger reveals that Tomas is indeed Tomasz Grygoruk, the blackhat hacker convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison for phishing scams in which he amassed around $300,000. Desleigh Jameson (GM, Instra) co-ordinated Rachinger’s meeting with Lentino and the job offer to work with Grygoruk. The role was to be ambiguously called Tony’s Apprentice.
In Part 9, Rachinger indicates that he was now in direct contact with Grygoruk regarding the Instra role. He also claims that at this time, the identity of the Dirty Politics hacker – Rawshark was circulating in the Press Gallery. It was at this time that Rachinger tweeted “I am Rawshark” as a show of solidarity. Following this, the Instra connection died off, Jameson claims the role never existed and Rachinger receives no further contact.
It’s unclear why Instra shut him out.
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Sidenote: Lentino, is the ex-Mega CEO who also spotted money for the Dotcom’s following the raid and asset freeze in January 2013. I am wondering if this will become relevant in later posts. Because there are some unanswered questions:
§ Was Lentino working with Dotcom against Slater § Was he working with Slater against Dotcom § Is all this purely coincidental § Did Lentino simply decide he didn’t want to work with Rachinger
In Part 10, Rachinger alleges that in private conversations, Slater makes clear his dislike of Lynne Prentice, author at The Standard.
Weak evidence: It can probably be ascertained from public record that Slater hates Prentice. After all, The Standard and Whale Oil Beef Hooked blogs are polar opposites [left vs right] and it’s likely the authors behind both sites are too. However, unlike previous posts where Rachinger provides screenshots to confirm many of the views Slater held, in this case, he has not. That could be for various reasons. If the conversation were spoken it would have required Rachinger to have taken audio recordings or for there to be another witness. Why does it matter? It could provide evidence of motive.
FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post):
Rachinger then provides a screen grab and email header involving Slater, David Farrar, and Matthew Hooten. The subject of that email involves whether someone can extract information on the authors at The Standard without hacking. Rachinger (somewhat facetiously) posits why he as a hacker was sent that email.
In Part 11, Rachinger makes the unequivocal statement that he was approached by Slater and offered $5,000 to hack The Standard and leave a backdoor to the server for ongoing access.
He claims to have received a $1,000 down payment from Slater and has provided screenshots of his bank statement to support this claim. He states that he never carried out the attack on The Standard.
FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post): further confirmation that the hacking was to be funded.
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Weak evidence: The evidence provided by Rachinger, that he was approached to hack The Standard is circumstantial i.e. his assertion that Slater dislikes Prentice, a forwarded email (involving Slater, Farrar and Hooten) identifying a potential interest in obtaining unauthorised information, a down payment from Slater, and Rachinger’s testimony
This allows us to draw strong inferences but is not conclusive proof.
One problem is that the evidence trail is inconsistent with the email trail of previous job offers involving both Slater and Rachinger. However, given the nature of the job, there is the question as to whether email is an appropriate communication platform when organising a hacking operation? However, one might assume Threema would be used given its high level encryption. So the question is why Rachinger does not provide direct evidence explicitly showing Slater soliciting his services for hacking and leaving a backdoor in the Standard system, or more precisely, does he have evidence to that conclusively proves this?
FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post):
Rachinger also alleges there were monetary incentives if the information achieved certain outcomes e.g. embarrassment or resignation of opposition MP’s. But he doesn’t provide evidence to substantiate that claim.
Rachinger claims that he was concerned about how ‘deep’ he was in the Whale Oil machine so he went to the Police and was interviewed and questioned without a Lawyer present. His devices were cloned for evidence and although the evidence sheet is not included in his post, he has made it available via his twitter:
He makes further allegations that Slater owns firearms and is connected to organised crime gangs and has powerful funders/backers.
It appears that Rachinger is ‘framing his case’ to illustrate how dangerous he believes Slater and friends to be. This is unsurprising if the allegations that he and his family have received death threats are true.
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Weak evidence: Rachinger would probably need to furnish a copy of the firearms licensed to Slater to prove this claim, and. I doubt he has access to that information. Regarding the gang connection, in an earlier post, Rachinger provides a screen shot of a conversation that implies Slater is connected enough to know that the Headhunters gang assaulted Matt Blomfield due to monies Blomfield owed the gang. This is not proof of Slater’s actual connection, since that information could come about via the kumara vine. It also is not evidence that this gang is somehow involved in the immediate issue. But the cumulative effect of that information does speak to the harm that Rachinger appears to believe that Slater through whomever his connections, is capable of inflicting.
FURTHER INFORMATION (Post publishing this post): on Slater’s admission to owning firearms. Additionally, apparently this is well known for readers of his blog and those who recall from the Dirty Politics book.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it appears that the Whale Oil machine continues to churn despite the revelations and media interest in Hager’s Dirty Politics. I don’t think that is exactly surprising to anyone. But just because it’s not surprising it’s also not an excuse to turn a blind eye either. That these operations allegedly involve the transfer of money and financial incentives to operatives to illegally extract information for corrupt political ends certainly adds a new and disturbing angle to this rancid behaviour. Additionally, the extent that the threats and operations sought to poison the blogosphere by targeting people behind the two largest left wing political blog sites in Aotearoa is also a real concern for democracy. If it is true that Slater and friends will attempt to destroy any person and undermine every inch of democracy that threatens to expose the machine and disrupt their political agenda then we might want to consider the extent to which the claims made by Rachinger can be substantiated.
Note: It has been suggested to me that I tread very cautiously and very sceptically in dealing with the Rachinger posts. The purpose of writing these summaries was to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the claims made. The analysis is by no means perfect. But I am interested
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The Hacker and All the PM’s Men continued:
Part 8: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the- pms-men-part-eight-35d3374fa43e
Part 9: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the- pms-men-part-nine-39f9651c914
Part 10: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all- the-pms-men-part-ten-be7aa6d1839f
Part 11: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all- the-pms-men-part-eleven-2f3322a0b22a
https://ellipsister.wordpress.com/2015/05/03/the-follow-up-the-rachinger- posts/
Pete George: Ben Rachinger versus Cameron Slater
Ben Rachinger launched into a tweet storm today that raises some interesting issues in relation to Cameron Slater, Whale Oil and Freed.
I don’t know what of this is accurate or relevant so may edit later.
B3n RⒶching3r So only Labour and Nats are going to be on Spy Review Committee? No small parties? Ok, that’s great. Let’s talk about Labour and Nats then
I can do the story with a foreign journo and have it published in a VERY reputable and respected International publication. #DontCattonMe This is how I imagine certain people looking at me right now #Goebbels Alright. So late last year, as part of the talks to work for Freed, I was invited out to the Estate of Mr Tony Lentino, Owner of Instra.
I was introduced to Tony via Cameron Slater. Tony is a genius and quite a mans man. I like him. I’m just going to summarise outcomes.
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Tony, Instra/Super Black Racing/OnlyDomainz owner, was the one who bailed out@KimDotcom when he was raided and has assets seized. Specifically, Mona (@KimDotcom wife) came to Tonys house and begged for money for her kids and rent payments. Tony, top bloke, agreed to it. When I say loan, I mean like $250,000 loans. So Kim had money quite soon after his arrest. Did Kim sort his own guys out? Like Finn? Guess.
Everyone that hates @Whaleoil but loves @KimDotcom makes me ill to my stomach. Kim is a piece of shit. Nazi regalia collection, snitch… But Kim didn’t deserve to be raided and have kids frightened. No one does, really. Which is the crux of problem. Why do we allow this? Why?
Everybody mad atcha boy Ben today.
For a deaf guy, I so enjoy some music ;) Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
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I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Frost – The Road Less Taken.
Have a good arvo Tweeps.
…@KarlKarlmarks Cam and Co. I’ve got a collection of all your socks and puppets. Here and on your site. Grow a pair and come frontally. …@KarlKarlmarks Because I’ve been nice to you and that can stop right now if you want to dance. Right now. Your choice, WhaleOil and crew. ..@KarlKarlmarks Seriously, you support racist and mysoginistic pieces of shit. I would enjoy it. Alright. Gloves off because Whales using socks to come at me. I was so fair to you. That ends now, brother. Think you’re hard? Let’s see :-) Alright so this was some of the messages I had from Whale last night.
I am known as someone who knows about network and computer security, in some circles. You get offered jobs. Would you like to hear about it?
I was offered $5,000 and bonuses to hack The Standard and pull out the authors list and keep a Backdoor in. I did not. Now you know.
If that’s true – and it wouldn’t surprise me – it would make Slater a major hypocrite with all his complaining about being illegally hacked and claiming he doesn’t do anything illegal.
But it also wouldn’t surprise me if this is made up to try and dump on Slater.
Lynn Prentice responded:
Lynn Prentice @lprent · @B3nRaching3r Should have taken the money. A pile of aliases, a few real names, and redirected gmails. Would need 4 computer hack to hide Rachinger’s response:
I’m pretty good. Would have phished and social engineered my way to the target. Totally illegal though, Mr Prentice.
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Lynn Prentice @lprent · Yeah right! You’d access from a 56yo old programmer on the nets and politics since before you were alive. Wrong skillset…
Rachinger
Why is there a redirect to Labour site on your server? Mitigate DDoS? Hosting? Genuinely curious.
Lynn Prentice @lprent · But hey. If you have any hard evidence of Blubberboy offering, I’ll show you the system in exchange. Prison calls for him.
Rachinger
I respect my adversary though. His name is Cameron Slater and he is furious a deaf, brown kid is not afraid of him and the DP crew.
And the thread continues:
Lefties need to clean their house. Right wingers need to grow a pair and sort their elites out. Kiwis need to wake up and Stand Up.
Let’s get in even more trouble Ben. Sorry, I couldn’t stand by and let Hager be jailed. I said what I had to say.
I’ve never met Hager. But the thought of the Govt gunning for him like this makes me mad. I’m probably going to be arrested for blowing this
It’s been a privilege/honour to go undercover to unmask them. I’ve given you enough to get started. Hopefully I see the tree from this seed.
“I must warn you that the people you’re speaking out against are ruthless, dangerous and powerful” Yeah, and?
That seems to be it at this stage, Keep an open mind on this. It could mean number of different things.
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Mike C says:
Ben Rachinger is very closely associated with Andrew Little and Matt McCarten :) I don’t know it that’s correct or not.
This comment from Slater yesterday on Facebook may or may not be related: I’m about done with lying, thieving, disloyal scumbags.
Slater seems to only post links to Whale OIl from his Twitter account these days. He has blocked me from following or viewing his Twitter (that’s futile).
Twitter profile:
http://yournz.org/2015/02/17/ben-rachinger-versus-cameron-slater/
Pete George: Rachinger versus Slater continued
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In February Ben Rachinger posted a flurry of tweets thretenting to prove that Cameron Slater had offered him money to hack The Standard. See Rachinger versus Cameron Slater. Yesterday he appeared to announce something:
B @B3nRaching3r · 19h 19 hours ago Hi y’all. Watch this space.
He had a few diversions then comes back with:
B @B3nRaching3r · Come for me Sharks. With your gang connections, your bullshit, your PsyOps and your security service corruption. I am your equal, at least.
The smartest among you have kept an open mind. I’m happy to tell you this patience will be rewarded in one way or another.
This is exactly how many people have felt. Under fire for telling the truth. Oh how far our society has fallen. We are in decline.
I will never begrudge people who don’t know how it works, hating me. I have ever fought for you.
An apparent shot at Slater:
B @B3nRaching3r You disgusting piece of shit. Standing on our grandfathers graves in Gallipoli and spinning your shit. Giving talks in schools. ‘Best Blog’.
Then:
B @ B3nRaching3r This email is at the heart of why the Govt, Slater, Farrar, Hooton and the Nats want me silenced. Yeah. I had them.
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Resuming this morning:
B @B3nRaching3r The raw hypocrisy of many, left and right, will soon become apparent. It’s not just the Govt that’s the problem. Privilege is a problem.
When people are tacitly enabled to slander, defame and bully people (on Twitter) w/out any fairness, you break people.
I’m accused of: Doxing women (False) Making net unsafe (False) Being a fake (False) Driving women off Twitter (Wasn’t me) …and so on.
Many people asked me “Why are these Wellington Twitterati going so hard on you? Why is ____ messaging everyone and anyone about you?”
It’s because SHE is an unbalanced obsessed stalker (I can prove this) and she actually prevented sunlight happening. When a media person..
… Targets you and tells everyone they can that you are scum, a danger to women and a hacker… You face a wall everywhere you turn. Fact.
But you didn’t break me ____. You tried extraordinarily hard. You and your friends who enable you to bully and target innocents are /end
Quoted for truth. If I really was a danger, I wouldn’t still be getting smeared. See what you look like after this
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Via another Twitter account: cαηυѕ єℓυѕινυѕ @MaLrw3 · 6h 6 hours ago “@B3nRaching3r Last screenie for today. Slater hiring me for $5,000 to hack the Standard. And y’all called me a liar”
Back to Ben: B @B3nRaching3r If I prove I’m not what she says I am, I prove what she says I am. Class A headfuck.
Fuck it. I’ll tell the story. Corrupt cops, government proxies and media who run their own attack lines. I’m at the end of my tether.
Let’s do this. I gave them all an opportunity to do their jobs, which we pay for one way or another, and they are CORRUPT.
You all asked “Why hasn’t the media or the cops done anything?” They’re corrupt
Even the great Matt Nippert believed what my enemies had to say. There is no justice but what you fight for. Allow me to school you.
While Slater gets funded trips to Gallipoli, I deal with death threats and cop harassment. There is no balance in NZ.
So I reported Mr Slater to the @nzpolice THREE MONTHS AGO. They’ve done nothing. They’ve given me no protection.
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They tried to make me an informant on my Maori brethren. I said fuck that, here’s slater being criminal. And nothing. S/O to Teina Pora.
We are living in a country where cops joke about smacking suspects with phone books to people laying complaints against powerful figures.
I can go on and on. But reality is – we have the society we want. JK? We allow it. Cops? We allow it. You. Allow. It. I despise that.
Having to write things by hand because the State is surveilling you? Sucks
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“Bens a Tinfoiler” Y’all said that, after I was dishonestly slammed in Nov/Dec, make me sick. You have made me sick. You have broken me.
Let’s not forget all the beautiful people who said things like this.
(Images that don’t seem relevant and identify people as some sort of payback)
And this.
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I’ve had my fill of white journalists telling me not to defend myself against white journalists. Shall we? :-) A diversion exchange with Mat Nippert.
B @B3nRaching3r
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Yes, why hasn’t the media in NZ picked this up? Shall we discuss possibilities for that?
Oh. Almost forgot this.
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Judge a man by how many enemies he can stand against and still laugh with joy for being in the fight. I’ll never fall to this scum.
Not one more backward step. #freebb#RipAaron I’ll be seeing you soon brothers. I’ve tweeted this before. But this is me against the machine. http://youtu.be/6Lg7C5uXvZw Oh she’s left Twitter because she feels unsafe! I’m not @nickdale You will not lie about me and drive me into a grave, you despicable chic
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Let there be sunlight. Secret vampires won’t like this. Fuck you. I’ve lost everything except my life. You stepped. This is the reply.
You smear me, issue death threats on me to my family and I, hack me, spy on me and try to drive me insane. Sorry. I’m not weak like you.
You should have expected me.
Women like her are the reason you women do not have equality faster. Challenge me on that. Please.
Ben can be hard to follow on Twitter and it’s hard to know if this is it or not. And I’m not sure whether it’s enough to take the ‘Slater paid to hack The Standard’ accusation any further.
I’ll keep an eye on developments, if there’s any.
UPDATE:
B @B3nRaching3r So let’s do a list of people and who they work for, that are attacking me without substance. It’s quite a list. I’ll include screenshots.
From @InternetNZ to @RadioLIVENZ, from @nzherald to @whaleoil, let’s have a look at these people who attack vulnerable people shall we? :) Even Beagle of the @techliberty Org has slandered and attacked me. This is why we do not have nice things. Evil, scummy people. Alright so here’s screencaps of tweets from people about me as I WAS BURYING MY GRANDMOTHER. (1)
A series of tweets each with four images of people Ben has grievances against. At this stage I don’t see a need to post them all. Seems to be a personal campaign.
This one gets a bit heavy handed:
?/?) That’s @LewSOS saying I should be beaten with an axe handle.
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B @B3nRaching3r You’ve basically been a pack of fucking trolls attacking me. Yet I still did not hack The Standard when he asked. Should of done it.
Lew @LewSOS Don’t play the fucking victim.
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B @ B3nRaching3r Hahaha whatever little boy. Your mistake in believing lies. I’ll be sure to mention your bullying to all and sundry.
Lew @ LewSOS At the very least, I’ll be teaching my kids not to go around doxxing women on the internet.
B @ B3nRaching3r Do you know what doxing is? Also “women”? Are you slandering me? WHERES YOUR PROOF? Go on. Prove it. Or retract. Fuckwit.
Lew @ LewSOS I believe the people who told me. B @ B3nRaching3r You’ve got nothing. Keyboard slander warrior. Much wow. Very impress. Hahaha. What a cock. You’re an embarrassment.
Pete George: Rachinger story gets weirder but no more told
Ben Rachinger went quiet when Lauda Finem launched against him, they posted a second time on Saturday – The Rachinger Conspiracy – What was in it for Matthew Blomfield and Crew Fraud? He’s been drip feeding an evolving kaleidoscope of tit bits, side stories and potentially newsworthy but under-supported claims.
Now he’s posted again on his blog with a plea for donations to fund the telling of his full story. Perhaps he would like to extend the drip feeding to funding.
Benjamin Rachinger
So for the last few weeks people have been getting an insight into a world which they had no direct knowledge of. That of Dirty Politics.
Good. Going down this rabbithole will only destroy good people and inform bad people of how easy it is to make money doing illegal activities with interesting people.
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I admit it.
I was sucked in by Cameron Slater. I was promised riches, a high paying job and life as a “patriot”.
Once I turned my back on him and tried to get back on an even keel…. Things became very hard for me. I had already lost the respect and love of my parents. Getting free of him has been the most challenging adventure of my life.
It has been one where I went from $500 pw and above in consideration…
To zero dollars. I’ve been stymied by WINZ (no comment) and had my name slandered and pulled apart by people as disparate as Lauda Finem and well- meaning activists.
I am completely broke. Homeless. Living moment to moment. Being threatened by the State and by ‘unknown’ assailants.
I fear for my very existence. I have nothing left to give but multiple angles for getting to story out.
I’m working with big names in MSM to bring this story to light. They have been able to check the facts that I was an informant and that I attempted to lay a complaint against Mr Slater for Conspiracy to Hack.
I need help. I’m ashamed to ask for it but I’ve been encouraged to do so.
I need time to write my story in long-form and get it out to you, the public.
If you can assist me financially to do so…
You will be doing good work. I’ve been unbalanced in my story and interactions because bringing this to light has cost me everything. I’ve suffered greatly from being disbelieved but I want one more shot to make this stick.
I CAN and WILL finish this story. It may have huge impacts on the political scene. At the very least… We will have more information about our situation.
I apologise to those I have offended. I wish only good things for the future.
Together, we can make this possible.
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“All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”
Walt Disney I have edited out his payment details, go to his blog if you want those. I don’t want to direct promote the seeking of donations for spinning yarns on a blog, I’d promote that for myself if I thought it was a valid way to do things (I don’t). http://yournz.org/2015/05/11/rachinger-story-gets-weirder-but-no-more-told/
Lauda Finem: The Rachinger Conspiracy – He was the perfect weapon until he became the target
Last evening (CEDST) an LF member was kept moderately busy dealing with various anonymous twitter accounts that seem to have taken exception to our last post on the pumped up scandal swirling around self-style so-called cyber activist Benjamin Stephen Rachinger. The story, apart from Rachinger himself, is largely being promoted by Greg Presland and Lynn Prentice at the Standard and Alasdair Thompson at Scoop.co.nz. Of course the Standard has its own left-wing political agenda, being the very antithesis of the right-wing Whale Oil blog and of course “Slater Haters” since Adam was a boy. Scoop’s decision to take up the story however we found more than a little baffling, especially given that most other mainstream media have been stearing well clear of it, obviously editorial decisions because it’s more than clear that at least one MSN journo, ex Fairfax hack turned Herald Prima Donna, Matt Nippert is chomping at the bit to cover the story. Matt Nippert, New Zealand Herald business investigations reporter, unfortunately Matt would be incapable of investigating the inside of a paper bag without fucking it up. Nippert, aka @MattNippert, in fact seemed to be amongst Rachinger’s rather small fan club, leading his own personal cavalry charge by retweeting very old correspondence attributed to David Fisher and favoriting a series of very
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 289 of 309 unusual tweets that inferred that Cameron Slater owned and controlled Lauda Finem. This line of thought, later becoming an outright allegation by many of the “anonymous” tweets received from self-identified so-called “activists”. In fact these activists attempted to intimidate LF with a series of coded threats, all quite juvenile and to absolutely no avail.
God love her, anyone else spot that @Teelin looks a little drug-fucked? Perhaps it’s the crystal meth that NZ has such a problem with? Then to our surprise Scoop.co.nz’s editor Alasdair Thompson started tweeting, an obvious attempt to get our attention. Thompson’s intro was a little confused, apparently mistaking the@whaleboil account for Slater’s own @whaleoil, although we aren’t particularly inclined to believe it was mistake, Thompson clearly had ideas of attempting to track our location. Thompson opined;
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Thompson’s poor attempt at sarcasm, complete with a screen grab of LF’s front page, started the ball rolling. Unfortunately for Thompson whilst he was not being upfront he was also driving a bus loaded dynamite, oh and a few fluorescent road signs pointing to serial fraudster Matthew John Blomfield. Sure LFs front page does now feature stories involving Blomfield, that fact is more an indictment on Blomfield as the stories are all separate corruption cases, wherein in the investigation again reveals the involvement of Blomfield and his “business” associates. Our story on Rachinger, when we looked at the evidence we hold, not all of it as yet in the public domain, yielded the same result – again Blomfield’s involvement. Of course this should come as no surprise really. The fact that it is unsurprising is also an indictment on the New Zealand MSM and the authorities who have failed to expose and prosecute Blomfield and his “Business”associates. Alasdair Thompson, Scoop.co.nz – Alasdair learnt just how easy it is to mistake one twitter ID or name for another.
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Scoop’s Thompson continued his tweets with a line of questioning the we found quite amusing, primarily because it was more than obvious that Thompson had been given something that he believed credible. Whatever it was it had clearly inspired a self confidence and a palpable certainty generally seen in arrogant arseholes, the misguided belief that he actually had the answers to the questions he’d posed. Of course we here at LF have no way of telling what it was Thompson though he had, but whatever it was it clearly held absolutely no bearing on the truth. The rest of Thompson’s twitter exchange unfolded thus:
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Thompson’s effort proved two facts beyond any doubt whatsoever, at least as far as we are concerned. That Matthew Blomfield was involved and likely the ringleader of the group behind Rachinger’s attack, not the police force, as is in the “institutional force”– although, having said that we do believe Rachinger’s claim that he was approached by someone claiming to be a Detective, a man who then asked to meet at a cafe. The question however is, was that because he
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 295 of 309 wasn’t really a police officer, or because they wanted to avoid being captured on CCTV or spotted by other police in the company of Rachinger at the police station. On that point Rachinger has in fact claimed that the so-called CIB officer gave him a police business card. Of course Rachinger can quite easily establish the truth of that claim by posting an image on twitter, as he has the other documents slagging Slater. Knowing the purported identity of the cop Rachinger is also undoubtedly in a position to publish the name of the very senior officer who he claims to have met on at least one occasion, assuming the“detective inspector” was not also his “Handler” in which case the meetings may have been more extensive. All of which would be very easy, all of which would remove any doubt around those aspects of Rachinger’s published account. We are at this stage prepared to accept that Rachinger may in fact not have been aware of what had gone on in the early stages of Blomfield’s scam, but Rachinger would have to have been a complete monkey not to have figured it out at some point. After all he seems to think that he’s figured everything else out correctly. The real issue for Rachinger now is that if what he is saying is true, that he was a police operative when he collected the material he’s now publishing then the police are completely culpable for any damage done to Slater or his business interests, and of course any damage done to others, especially given the fact that nothing seems to have resulted from Rachinger’s claimed under-cover operation. There’s little doubt that New Zealand’s mainstream media would have pounced on it had Slater’s house in fact been raided and searched, or Slater arrested and taken in for questioning. On that score LF in fact suspects that having Slater raided by police is Blomfield’s next objective, hence the innuendo he now has his journalist fuck- buddies attempting to “seed” using social media such as twitter – all very nasty and of course only to be expected given the hatred and contempt the
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 296 of 309 aforementioned journalists have for Slater, but never the less a complete waste of time. So where does that leave Rachinger? Up shit creek unfortunately, perhaps someone will lend him a paddle? The police have not come forward publicly admitting to having employed Rachinger’s service’s, nor are they likely to, especially given that it was not likely an operation officially sanctioned by the police, at least that’s how the cops will have made it appear on paper. Rachinger, if he was a genuine police informant will have been paid, there will be a paper trail that is required for accounting purposes. In taking this course of action Rachinger has unwittingly just waived any entitlement to the protections that he may have once relied on to ensure those details remained confidential, if they in fact ever existed…and that’s a fucking big if – especially as it would seem that the police aren’t in the least interested in a boy who’s now crying wolf with bogus claims (Part 12 and 13, which Rachinger it appears has now also deleted) that New Zealand motorcycle gang, the 88’s (head Hunters), were coming to get him. So all of the above leads in our view to Matthew John Blomfield, Daniel Toresen and his dodgy investigation business, a number of others, including at least one sworn police officer, who we won’t be naming just yet. There is no doubt whatsoever that Rachinger has formed very strong opinions on Slater, with that we actually have very little problem. It’s the opinions that Rachinger has clearly formed around theBlomfield v Slater defamation case that are of concern to us, for reasons that will no doubt soon become apparent.
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The opinions that now seem to be forming among the mainstream media players, more especially those that either despise Slater or simply envious of his strange success, are also indicative of Blomfield’s hand, oh and of course the hand of charlatan private investigator, media darling and journalist fuck-buddy Daniel Thompson, a man that thought that by changing his name to Toresen he would appear less common. Now lets take a look at a bit more chronology, some of it, as in it relates to certain legal proceedings not in the public domain yet. Regular long term readers will be familiar with most of the history surrounding Mr Blomfield and his commercial antics, including of course the Journos that follow LF. For those
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 298 of 309 who are unfamiliar with the story we will at some point provide a bibliography at the base of the post. Daniel Toreson bent private investigator, Blomfield collaborator and allround con artist. Rachinger first went public with his claims last month. He had obviously been in touch with people running blogs on the left of the political field beforehand, those people included Lynn Prentice and Greg Prescott. He had also, by his own admission fed at least one mainstream journo with information. Lynn Prentice posted a piece on his blog the Standard on 20th February confirming that the New Zealand Herald had been in contact with Rachinger and would at some point be publishing a story. The Standards post read; Interesting story coming up in The Herald Written By: NOTICES AND FEATURES – Date published: 12:10 am, February 20th, 2015 There will probably be a story soonish in The Herald that will be of particular interest to The Standard community. We have had nothing to do with the coverage. We’ve just been watching events unfold on Twitter, and we’re happy to see it come out (thanks to a brave individual) via The Herald. Source: http://thestandard.org.nz/interesting-story-coming-up-in-the- herald/ No one at the Standard however seemed willing to put their name to the article – the fact of the matter is that it was Lynn Prentice. The brave individual, as we all now know, was of course Benjamin Stephen Rachinger. So how did Lynn Prentice get to know about the story that was to be published via the New Zealand Herald? Well it was because Matthew Blomfield told Lynn Prentice that the New Zealand Herald was working on it. Blomfield had also advised the boys at the Standard, Prentice and Presland, in vague terms, what he and the Herald had planned. Toresens Father bent ex cop Dan Thompson aka monkey boy – Dan apparently beams with pride whenever another cops heard saying – don’t worry the monkey’s got my back So who at the Herald had responsibility for carriage of Blomfield’s latest “rule the world” master plan? Our educated guess is Matt Nippert. Blomfield has plenty of history with a number of journalists at the NZ Herald. Whilst involved with the Hell Pizza franchise at least three Herald journalist ran attack pieces that were designed by Blomfield to harm his adversaries, including Australian food company AFP, the directors, Founder Warren Powell and yes you guessed
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 299 of 309 it even his fellow franchise owners. The most likely candidates, simply because they are the only ones who remain employed by the paper are David Fisher and Matt Nippert, both of whom are exceptionally close to Blomfield personally, both of whom currently have a lot to loose, not least, their credibility. In fact Nippert wrote and published a story to cover for another of Blomfields commercial rorts only this morning (See – Housing developer in liquidation).
Matt Nippert set the sarcastic tone, the rest followed, and then Nippert set about collecting his favourites Nippert, perhaps somewhat foolishly, lent further support to the likelihood that he was the journalist involved when he decided to tweet LF, and others, with material that he obviously found amusing, nevertheless also designed to discredit LF’s previous post. Quite why he bothered is frankly beyond us as he knows full well these issues will not ultimately be decided by his twitter efforts. Nippert has to make money for his employer with what he write’s and he lacks the skills and time required for criminal forensic investigations. So on February 20th 2015 Lynn Prentice gives his readers the heads-up on an up-coming Herald exclusive. But what is interesting however about Prentice’s little intro is his obvious reticence. Normally if Prentice was given the heads-up that the Herald was about to publish a killer story on Cameron Slater Prentice would not have been able to hold back his enthusiasm, arguably the langauge used would have been very different. Prentice’s obvious reluctance, almost a
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 300 of 309 nervousness of sorts, is a sign that there was very likely more to the New Zealand Heralds proposed story than just Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater. LF believes that it was this secondary factor that was responsible for Prentice’s very obvious trepidation. Whats more that secondary factor was also likely responsible for Prentice’s, “We have had nothing to do with the coverage” disowning of the Herald’s expose. So what was it exactly that Lynn Prentice was afraid of? We have an answer to that question and it has a lot to do with another seemingly unrelated event, the occurrence of the event reducing, for a period, Lynn Prentice and Greg Preslands anxiety levels, that very brief hiatus undoubtedly responsible for the pairs more recent loose tongues and questionable sense of humour. On exactly the same day, February 20th Bryce Edwards, “NZ Politics Daily, column in New Zealand’s National Business Review promoted a series of posts that Pete George was running through his blog, the upshot being that Rachinger himself had gone public using twitter and without the umbrella protection of the NZ Herald and their well paid and heavily insured legal advisors. So if the herald were soon to do a story why the sudden premature ejaculation by Rachinger? This too was an indication of Blomfield’s involvement, poor old Matt’s drug habit has brought about a serious problem with premature ejaculation, especially when in the presence of a bent journalist, apparently that fetish now extends to corrupt cops as well. NZ POLITICS DAILY: February 20 2015 DR BRYCE EDWARDS Rachinger vs Slater Pete George (Your NZ): Ben Rachinger versus Cameron Slater Pete George (Your NZ): Rachinger previously Pete George (Your NZ): More on Rachinger accusations Source: http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/nz-politics-daily-february-20-2015 So what happened next? Well on March 8th the cause of Prentice, Presland and the MSN’s anxiety was temporarily removed, that aspect of the plan however developed a few unexpected complications and so unsurprisingly Prentice and Presland returned to their more circumspect behaviour, which had not gone unnoticed by others.
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Pete George at YourNZ had certainly noticed the spike in arrogance and the sudden morphing into a more balanced tone, with Prentice in particular. No doubt this independent observation will come in handy for those affected by Prentice’s extremely prejudicial behaviour, see; Prentice ignores lawyer advice on suppression Then on 28th April 2015 another event occurred, on the surface a rather unremarkable event, but one that could well explain the cock-sure arrogance of the two bozo Kiwi journalists LF received tweets from last evening. It may well, by default, also explain just what it was that the New Zealand Police used Rachinger’s police statement for. Kiwi Rugby player Mark ‘Sharkey’ Robinson, taken to the cleaners and then pissed on by Blomfield On April 28th Matthew Blomfield drove from his home in Greenhithe to Aucklands High Court where he proceeded to file whats known as a memorandum in the matter SLATER Cameron John v BLOMFIELD Matthew John CIV-2013-404-5218. Within that document lay one of the most extraordinary lies Matthew Blomfield has ever told. It was a simple lie, but given Blomfield’s history and the past allegations of purjury that have been levelled against him, a lie that may have extraordinary consequences for him and his flip-flopping defamation tort. Blomfield’s tactic today is not so much about completing the litigation he initiates, it’s about grinding down his targets and their bank accounts and then bankrupting them. In fact speaking of bankruptcies, it appears, on the face of it, that it’s what Blomfield recently did to Kiwi Rugby player Mark Sharkey Robinson. Blomfield caused his financial difficulties and then used a power of attorney to shift responsibility for the losses to Robinson. Then through a series of additional corporate manoeuvres ensured Robinson was declared bankrupt, removing the likelihood of Robinson’s return to New Zealand, at least for a while or until the statute of limitations for a criminal prosecution expired – that’s our take on how and why. The National Business Review published a couple of articles in quick succession last month;
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Former All Black passes on bankruptcy mystery – Hamish McNicol, 17th April, 2015 NBR (paid content) Blomfield encouraged former All Black’s missed property punt – Hamish McNicol, 30th April 2015 NBR (paid content) The former All Black halfback Mark “Sharky” Robinson, who recently denied he is bankrupt, put $70,000 into a failed lifestyle property development after former Hell Pizza franchisee Matt Blomfield encouraged him to “buy into it.” NBR ONLINE has reported a Mark Darren Robinson, born in 1975, was in February bankrupted by the High Court at Wellington on sn application by ANZ. The former All Black, who shares the same full name and year of birth, denies it is him. Only one Mark Darren Robinson is listed on New Zealand Companies Office records, which a lawyer confirms is the ex-All Black known as ‘Sharky’. – Hamish McNicol, 30th April 2015 Kiwi allround dodgy fuck, serial fraudster and conman Matthew John Blomfield, a walking fucking disaster zone for everyone, except himself of course It is important to note that his lawyer, Miles baby-face Beresford, the boy normally responsible for filing such documents had wanted nothing to do with it. LF has been advised that Beresford is refusing to respond to a request for information on whether he is still acting solicitor. LF suspects that this is because Beresford refused to file the document, knowing the documents contents to have been a complete and utter fabrication. At paragraph 11. Blomfield has the clearly drug fucked temerity to falsely declare, effectively on oath;
Blomfield at paragraph 9. had referenced an LF article http://laudafinem.com/2014/11/14/matthew-john-blomfield-the-house-of- cards-that-matt-built/, which Blomfield is now attempting to convince the court is all Slater’s work, that Kiwi Blogger Cameron Slater is the true identity of the “person” behind Lauda Finem. So if Blomfield is now claiming that Cameron Slater owns, operates and or controls Lauda Finem there is one of two things going on. The first is that he’s
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 303 of 309 forgotten that he’s accused at least two others in court documents, or two, that the case against the last person Blomfield accused of being Lauda Finem has now collapsed and Blomfield now knows that or the third, Blomfield is attempting to create an alibi, one that would distance him from any allegations that Rachinger may make regarding an as yet unmentioned hacking incident. Miles “baby-face” Beresford, Blomfield’s current lawyer, wearing the weathered face of experience. There is of course another possibility, one that is more than obvious if you actually have access to the truth and for the journalists now conveniently starting to promote the idea that Cameron Slater is actually the blogger Lauda Finem. The circumstance must of course be very strange for the journalists, they have these allegations but no correspondence between Slater and Lauda Finem. No emails, no “threema” texts whatsoever, nothing not even a telephone call? there conclusion? Well it something along the lines of “God, Slater is LF…..we knew it, we just fucking knew it, it had to be that big fat cunt Slater” Of course it had not crossed their tiny minds that LF has never spoken or corresponded with Slater for very good reason, and that reason is unfolding as we speak, courtesy of Slater himself in fact, his very loose lips and of course the text’s he though were being sent to Rachinger – all of course being read by Matthew John Blomfield, whilst posing as Benjamin Stephen Rachinger – just look at the vocabulary and structure, is it really the language Rachinger uses? LF has never had to deal with Slater, the que of business people who Blomfield has harmed is long, as is the legal document trail, all of which of course is on public record and freely available to anyone who cares to spend the time looking. Just how it is Blomfield plans on convincing a judge that Slater is Lauda Finem, when he is most certainly not, is as yet unknown, but it would be worth being in court when he attempts to. Two days after filing the memorandum, April 30th, Blomfield was again back at the Auckland High Court registry, this time however something went seriously wrong for Blomfield, he obviously had not got his own way, so he
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 304 of 309 threw a wobbly, the result of which was that he was escorted from the High Court by security guards. So what exactly was it that went so wrong? Well we are not sure about the court, but were pretty sure that when Rachinger, as an insider, hacked Slater’s emails etc, the absence of any emails from Lauda Finem had them stumped. It had not occurred to Blomfield We had to laugh when one of Rachinger’s enthusiastic supporters tweeted, making what he thought might look like plausible statements to other twitter users:
There just one problem with @Redbaternz’s (above) analysis and hypothesis – nothing is stopping Rachinger from continuing to tell his story. We here at LF certainly aren’t, it would assist us greatly if he had continued. The truth is that young Mr Rachinger knows only too well, as do his accomplices, especially Kiwi serial fraudster Matthew John Blomfield, that in continuing they would have dug the hole they’re in even deeper.
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So @MattCommonSense might like to look at getting some commonsense himself, starting with understanding that nobody really gives a rats arse about his tweets, the grabbing of micro seconds in cyberspace. At the end of the day the only thing that will remain are the opinions of those with evidence, those who actually got it right. That’s in fact probably the reason for Rachinger being told to delete “chapter twelve” of his account. The chapter where he makes allegations against Lauda Finem, complete with links to LF’s last post:
Source: https://medium.com/@benrachinger/the-hacker-and-all-the-pms-men-part-twelve-b6ebd3f9073c No, Rachinger has now been instructed to sing from another of Blomfield’s song sheets, the “OMG I’m receiving death threats and the cop’s won’t help me” aria. What’s more Rachinger’s singing like a fucking Canary – Staccato!! So where’s the fucking Detective Inspector that allegedly encourage Rachinger to become a police undercover operative, nowhere to be seen it would appear?? It’s very much an oldie but goodie. There’s just one problem with it however, Rachinger’s not old or experienced enough to have known this particular
Compiled by Bryce Edwards NZ Politics Daily: 7 June 2015 Page 306 of 309 song. It’s a tune from the repertoire of a far more accomplished criminal mind – the person who handed Rachinger the score and told him to sing his little heart out, so obviously he’s done just as he was told, thats if twitter is anything to go by – yet again we see Rachingers talent for “social engineering”.
So who still believes that Rachinger was a police operative, an informant recruited by the New Zealand police force, deep under cover, complete with a police handler, absolutely no experience or briefing, all while using an encrypted texting service to communicate? If anyone still does then they are just as big an idiot as Rachinger is.
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There is another idiot among the throng queuing up for the fuckwit of the year award, one that we have not really mentioned yet, one that no ones really heard from either for that matter. Anyone able to guess just who that might be? That’s right, it’s Cameron Slater – the man who appears to have taken Rachinger, a self-confessed hacker, at his word. No checks, no balances, just open the door and let Rachinger in, hand him the keys and the run of the house. Of course if Slater did believe Rachinger to be Rawshark, or in some way connected to that particular hacker, then of course that’s something he might do, but so far not a dickie bird from Mr Slater. The fact is that Rachinger’s work had nothing directly to do with Rawshark. Rachinger had been Blomfield’s man inside all along, planted by Blomfield, paid for by Blomfield and at least two others and reporting to Blomfield, albeit on occasion working with corrupt cops and at least two thoroughly bent ex- cops, being Dan Thompson and his son Daniel Toresen. Of course the threats that LF received via twitter after our last post could well have been any one of the aforemention village idiots, probably more likely than not given the references to “Karma”, but they are of little concern to us. We’ll just continue on with our work, exposing criminals, fraudsters, dirty civil servants and of course the many corrupt cops that have riddled New Zealand’s police force with the disease. Get some rest Ben, you’re looking tired!
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Update: It would seem that poor old Ben Rachinger has completely lost his sense of humour, which is understandable. But he’s still going hard at it with Blomfields song sheet;
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Problem with Ben’s singing, oh and his tweets, is that neither seem to have a bearing on reality. We also knew that Ben wouldn’t be able to help himself, that’s why we threw in a little temptation. What Ben’s tweet also evidences is his complete inability to grasp “CONTEXT”, so we thought we’d help him out a little:
http://laudafinem.com/2015/05/06/the-rachinger-conspiracy-he-was-the- perfect-weapon-until-he-became-the-target/
Compiled by Bryce Edwards